Code Snippet

b='ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/'

function encode(data)
    return ((data:gsub('.', function(x) 
        local r,b='',x:byte()
        for i=8,1,-1 do r=r..(b%2^i-b%2^(i-1)>0 and '1' or '0') end
        return r;
    end)..'0000'):gsub('%d%d%d?%d?%d?%d?', function(x)
        if (#x < 6) then return '' end
        local c=0
        for i=1,6 do c=c+(x:sub(i,i)=='1' and 2^(6-i) or 0) end
        return b:sub(c+1,c+1)
    end)..({ '', '==', '=' })[#data%3+1])
end

function decode(data)
    data = string.gsub(data, '[^'..b..'=]', '')
    return (data:gsub('.', function(x)
        if (x == '=') then return '' end
        local r,f='',(b:find(x)-1)
        for i=6,1,-1 do r=r..(f%2^i-f%2^(i-1)>0 and '1' or '0') end
        return r;
    end):gsub('%d%d%d?%d?%d?%d?%d?%d?', function(x)
        if (#x ~= 8) then return '' end
        local c=0
        for i=1,8 do c=c+(x:sub(i,i)=='1' and 2^(8-i) or 0) end
        return string.char(c)
    end))
end
Lua 5.1.5  Copyright (C) 1994-2012 Lua.org, PUC-Rio
> print(encode("Hello world"))
SGVsbG8gd29ybGQ=
> print(decode("SGVsbG8gd29ybGQ="))
Hello world
>


References

  1. http://lua-users.org/wiki/BaseSixtyFour