What I was alluding to is, I often convert any binary data, including text, to Base64 to avoid dealing with cross platform, cross language, cross format, cross

What I was alluding to is, I often convert any binary data, including text, to Base64 to avoid dealing with cross platform, cross language, cross format, cross storage, cross network data-handling. Only the layer that needs to deal with the blob's actual string representation needs to worry about encoding schemes that are outside the purview of the humble ASCII table.