NAME

a64l, l64a − convert long integer and base-64 ASCII string

SYNTAX

long a64l (s)
char ∗s;

char ∗l64a (l)
long l;

DESCRIPTION

These functions are used to maintain numbers stored in base-64 ASCII characters.  This is a notation by which long integers can be represented by up to six characters; each character represents a “digit” in a radix-64 notation. 

The characters used to represent “digits” are .  for 0, / for 1, 0 through 9 for 2−11, A through Z for 12−37, and a through z for 38−63. 

The a64l subroutine takes a pointer to a null-terminated base-64 representation and returns a corresponding long value.  If the string pointed to by s contains more than six characters, a64l will use the first six.

The l64a subroutine takes a long argument and returns a pointer to the corresponding base-64 representation.  If the argument is 0, l64a returns a pointer to a null string.

RESTRICTIONS

The value returned by l64a is a pointer into a static buffer, the contents of which are overwritten by each call.