Storing barcodes as ASCII

Question

I am currently looking at a TIFF file generated by a microscope vendor. They store an XML within the TIFF (ImageDescription tag). Within this XML I can find a <barcode> element. But instead of storing the actual barcode (PDF417, DataMatrix) value, they store something else.

I have three samples, first one is a PDF417, the last two are DataMatrix. Decoding the values leads to:

04050629C
H13150154711A11
H13150154512A02

while the XML element <barcode> contains (in that order):

MDQwNTA2MjlD
SDEzMTUwMTU0NzExQTEx
SDEzMTUwMTU0NTEyQTAy

What type of encoding is this ?

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 24 '13 at 17:34

7

The type of encoding is Base64 encoding.

$ echo MDQwNTA2MjlD | base64 -d
04050629C

$ echo SDEzMTUwMTU0NzExQTEx | base64 -d
H13150154711A11

edited Oct 24 '13 at 17:34

jvoisin

2,516
16
23

answered Oct 24 '13 at 08:48

anonymous

94
1

Try to elaborate a bit (or just drop a comment). – perror Oct 24 '13 at 08:49
Genius ! $ echo MDQwNTA2MjlD | base64 --decode -> 04050629C – tibar Oct 24 '13 at 08:50

Storing barcodes as ASCII

1 Answers1