title: What is the real purpose of Base64 encoding?
body: <p>Why do we have Base64 encoding? I am a beginner and I really don't understand why would you obfuscate the bytes into something else (unless it is encryption). In one of the books I read Base64 encoding is useful when binary transmission is not possible. Eg. When we post a form it is encoded. But why do we convert bytes into letters? Couldn't we just convert bytes into string format with a space in between? For example, <code>00000001 00000004</code>? Or simply <code>0000000100000004</code> without any space because bytes always come in pair of 8?</p>