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authorR David Murray <rdmurray@bitdance.com>2015-12-13 23:04:14 (GMT)
committerR David Murray <rdmurray@bitdance.com>2015-12-13 23:04:14 (GMT)
commitb75adccd0af3a45ac63bc003af4fe6945d6cd6e4 (patch)
treec920507104695815600dbae20b0ab6c61a701084
parent64fa45af5a5acadb3f42a1668f99c0c3784eca69 (diff)
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#25495: Clarify b2a_base64 documentation vis 57 bytes.
-rw-r--r--Doc/library/binascii.rst8
1 files changed, 5 insertions, 3 deletions
diff --git a/Doc/library/binascii.rst b/Doc/library/binascii.rst
index 0f8a3de..5eb7c4b 100644
--- a/Doc/library/binascii.rst
+++ b/Doc/library/binascii.rst
@@ -45,8 +45,10 @@ The :mod:`binascii` module defines the following functions:
.. function:: b2a_base64(data)
Convert binary data to a line of ASCII characters in base64 coding. The return
- value is the converted line, including a newline char. The length of *data*
- should be at most 57 to adhere to the base64 standard.
+ value is the converted line, including a newline char. The newline is
+ added because the original use case for this function was to feed it a
+ series of 57 byte input lines to get output lines that conform to the
+ MIME-base64 standard. Otherwise the output conforms to :rfc:`3548`.
.. function:: a2b_qp(string[, header])
@@ -165,7 +167,7 @@ The :mod:`binascii` module defines the following functions:
.. seealso::
Module :mod:`base64`
- Support for base64 encoding used in MIME email messages.
+ Support for RFC compliant base64-style encoding in base 16, 32, and 64.
Module :mod:`binhex`
Support for the binhex format used on the Macintosh.