(OP means Original Poster)

n the end, this site is about helping community. All the associated answers and comments are available for a visitor to peruse and consider. It is decidedly less valuable to the community when all answers are identical.

The title of the question is what triggered the process of finding this Q/A for material that aided development of the above to solve a real life problem described by the title. The OP declared that base64 decode was not the "real" problem; pedantic constraint of answers to a particular "example" seems less helpful. When this question and its answers were key to helping solve real problems, alternate answers can be gifts to the community in recognition of the fact that many more people will use this Q/A to solve problems. Since the answer is on-topic per the title, I feel it is "game on".