Universal String Encoder

A universal string encoder CLI tool and Python library for encoding/decoding strings in various formats.

Check out the official documentation

Features

• 🚀 Simple CLI - Encode/decode from stdin or files
• 🔌 Extensible - Easy to add new encoders
• 🎯 Flexible - Support for custom character sets
• 📦 Lightweight - No heavy dependencies
• 🧪 Well-tested - Comprehensive test suite with snapshot testing

Install

usenc is available on PyPi.

Install the CLI automatically

pipx install usenc

Or with traditional pip (in a virtual env)

pip install usenc

Quick Example

CLI

# Get help and parameters
usenc --help
usenc <encoder> --help

# Encode a string
echo "hello world" | usenc url
# Output: hello%20world

# Decode
echo "hello%20world" | usenc url -d
# Output: hello world

# File input/output
usenc url -i input.txt -o output.txt

# More complex encoding
echo "hello world" | usenc hex --prefix '${' --suffix '}' --lowercase
# Output: ${68}${65}${6c}${6c}${6f}${20}${77}${6f}${72}${6c}${64}

# Optional character selection
echo "hello world" | usenc cstring --include e
# Output: h\x65llo\x20world

Python

from usenc import encode, decode

# Encode
encoded = encode(b'hello world', encoder='url')
print(encoded)  # hello%20world

# Decode
decoded = decode(encoded, encoder='url')
print(decoded)  # hello world

Available Encoders

• base16 - Standard Base16 encoding (RFC 4648)
• base32 - Standard Base32 encoding (RFC 4648)
• base64 - Standard Base64 encoding (RFC 4648)
• cstring - C string escaping
• doubleurl - Double URL encoding (RFC 3986 percent encoding)
• hash - Base hash encoder using python hashlib
• hex - Hexadecimal string encoding
• html - HTML Entities encoding
• md5 - MD5 hash encoding
• sha1 - SHA-1 hash encoding
• sha256 - SHA-256 hash encoding
• unicode - Unicode escapes encoding
• url - Standard URL encoding (RFC 3986 percent encoding)

Optional Encoding

Some encoders provide the option to select which characters should be encoded (e.g. url or cstring). Those have a default setting that can be augmented with --include some_chars and --exclude some_chars.

Advanced users can specify directly --regex match_chars that will override these parameters.

Global Parameters

The bulk (-bor --bulk) parameter makes the encoder process the whole file instead of line by line. This mode can be useful for encoders like base64 or md5.

For some encoders, the way the input bytes and output bytes are interpreted into strings matter. You can use parameters --input-charset and --output-charset to set the charsets used by the encoder. They both default to utf8 which should be fine in most situations.

echo héllo | usenc url --output-charset utf8
> h%C3%A9llo
echo héllo | usenc url --output-charset latin1
> h%E9llo
echo h%E9llo | usenc url -d --input-charset latin1
> héllo

Development

See the Contributing Guide and How to add an encoder

License

MIT License - see LICENSE file for details.