Real-time ASCII-85 Converter
Data Density Analysis
0 B
Original Size
0 B
Encoded Size
+0%
Size Overhead
~33.3%
Base64 Overhead
File Encoder / Decoder
Encode a local file into an ASCII-85 string, or decode a string back into a file.
Encode File to ASCII-85
Drag & drop a file here or click to select
No file selected.
Decode ASCII-85 to File
ASCII-85 Character Validator
Enter a string to verify if it contains only valid ASCII-85 characters (! through u, and optionally z). Whitespace is ignored.
ASCII-85 Reference
ASCII-85 Alphabet
The 85 characters used are all printable ASCII characters from ! (ASCII 33) to u (ASCII 117).
!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstu
How It Works
ASCII-85 encoding takes groups of 4 binary bytes (32 bits) and represents them as 5 ASCII characters. This is more space-efficient than Base64, which uses 4 characters to represent 3 bytes (24 bits).
- Overhead: 5 bytes out for 4 bytes in = 25% size increase.
- Base64 Overhead: 4 bytes out for 3 bytes in = 33.3% size increase.
Common Usage
It is commonly used in Adobe's PostScript and Portable Document Format (PDF) file formats.
| Feature | Description |
|---|---|
| Delimiters | Data is typically wrapped in <~ and ~>. |
| 'z' shorthand | A single 'z' character is used as a shorthand for 4 zero bytes (0x00000000), which often occur in data. |
| 'y' shorthand | A less common variant uses 'y' to represent 4 space bytes (0x20202020). This tool does not implement the 'y' shorthand. |