The goals of unambiguous and concise are at odds, and this format (well, the defaults) errs on the side of shorter. To lessen ambiguity even more, there's Croc

The goals of unambiguous and concise are at odds, and this format (well, the defaults) errs on the side of shorter. To lessen ambiguity even more, there's Crockford Encoding[0]. Results in longer strings, but there's no case distinction, and the similar looking characters decode the same. Looks like you can get mostly Crockford Encoding using this library by changing the character set (which is why said "the defaults" above). The check digit in Crockford Encoding is a huge win for when these are dictated/transcribed, but may need to be URL-encoded. [0] http://www.crockford.com/wrmg/base32.html http://www.crockford.com/wrmg/base32.html