Trimming base64 encoded string

removing the equal sign(s)

[ag_47]

After a few tries, this seems to be safe. Just want to double-check to make sure no problems arise later on.

eg.
base64_encode('This is an encoded string') ==> 'VGhpcyBpcyBhbiBlbmNvZGVkIHN0cmluZw='

and
base64_deocde('VGhpcyBpcyBhbiBlbmNvZGVkIHN0cmluZw') ==> 'This is an encoded string'

So removing the '='s from the end is no prob? (they are there from 'completion' anyway right?)

[eeek]

So removing the '='s from the end is no prob?

Why would you do that? They do actually mean something.

[ag_47]

Why would you do that?

To make URL safe (I know I could replace them with a different character, but having one/two symbols at the end kind of gives base64 away..)

[blang]

Have you read anything about base64 [en.wikipedia.org]?

[ag_47]

Yes, I have.

After trying several examples it seemed removing = doesn't make a difference when decoding (at least in PHP) - but I decided to double-check here anyway.
Since = is used for padding (ie. indicate the addition of 0s at the end), the base64_decode function in PHP seems to take care of this if '=' are omitted.