from Hacker News

Base64 Is Base65

by gizmore on 1/16/23, 8:00 PM with 2 comments

Because there is a special padding character '='
  • by bob1029 on 1/16/23, 8:05 PM

    The padding character is not required for the underlying encoding scheme to function in isolation. It becomes more useful when you have a stream of multiple, un-delimited base64 values that need to be processed.
  • by pestatije on 1/16/23, 8:32 PM

    '=' is not part of the payload. It belongs to the carrier protocol to signal end of payload.