perform some function.

It is often desired to send non-textual data through a text-based system, such as attaching an image to an e-mail message. To accomplish this, the data is encoded in some way, such that 8-bit data is encoded as 7-bit ASCII characters (generally using only alphanumeric and punctuation characters--the ASCII printable characters). Upon arrival at its destination, it is then decoded back to its 8-bit form. This process is referred to as binary to text encoding. Many programs perform this conversion to allow for data-transport,