ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Ascii85

Ascii85 is a special way of writing text so that it takes up less space but can still be easily read by computers. Think of it like a secret code that computers can understand.

Every letter, number, and symbol has a number associated with it, like 65 for the letter A. In ascii85, these numbers are written out in groups of four, as long as they are between 0 and 84, and then turned into a combination of five letters or symbols. This makes it easier for computers to read and understand the text, but also makes it harder for people to read unless they know the secret code.

So, instead of a three-letter word taking up three bytes of space (like "cat" being written as 99 97 116 in regular text), in ascii85, it might look something like "mxW^+3", taking up only six characters instead of nine. This can be really helpful when you're trying to send or store a lot of data in a small space, like in a tweet or in a file.

Overall, ascii85 is just a fancy way of writing text that helps computers process it quickly and efficiently.
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