Initial Commit

README.md

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+# go-base58
+
+A Base58 encoding and decoding package for [Go](https://golang.org/).
+
+## What?
+
+Base58 allows you to represent a numeric value with fewer characters, useful
+for short URLs among other things. Flickr is one the biggest sites that makes
+use of it for short photo URLs.
+
+For example `6857269519` becomes `brXijP` when Base58 encoded, and hence the
+Flickr short URL is: `http://flic.kr/p/brXijP`
+
+## Installation
+
+    go get https://github.com/jimeh/go-base58
+
+## Usage
+
+```go
+import "github.com/jimeh/go-base58"
+
+uid := base58.Encode(6857269519)
+fmt.Println(uid) // Prints: brXijP
+
+num, err := base58.Decode('brXijP');
+fmt.Println(num) // Prints: 6857269519
+```
+
+## Credit
+
+This package is more or less a port of the [Base58][gem] Ruby Gem by the same
+name. Which as far as I can tell, is based on [this article][article] by Flickr
+staff.
+
+[gem]: https://github.com/dougal/base58
+[article]: https://www.flickr.com/groups/51035612836@N01/discuss/72157616713786392/
+
+## License
+
+Released under the MIT license. Copyright (c) 2016 Jim Myhrberg.