Depends on the decoder's default settings - some applications of base64 ignore padding but not all of them. As an example, Elixir's stdlib includes a base64 de

Depends on the decoder's default settings - some applications of base64 ignore padding but not all of them. As an example, Elixir's stdlib includes a base64 decoder; passing "padding: false" will give the "decode anything" behavior you're describing. https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Base.html#decode64/2 https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Base.html#decode64/2