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Quoted-printable is a MIME content-transfer encoding that keeps printable US-ASCII characters readable and represents other data bytes as an equals sign followed by two hexadecimal digits. For example, =3D stands for the equals sign itself. It is an encoding of data, not a character set.
How to read quoted-printable text
Quoted-printable encodes octets—individual data bytes—while leaving many safe printable characters unchanged. An escape such as =XX represents the octet whose value is hexadecimal XX. Since a literal equals sign would otherwise look like the start of an escape, it is encoded as =3D.
The format is designed to keep lines manageable for mail transport. Under RFC 2045, section 6.7, an encoded line may contain at most 76 characters, excluding its ending CRLF (carriage return and line feed). If a line must continue, the encoder puts = at its end. That marker is a soft line break: remove it and join the next encoded line when decoding.
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Soft wraps are not text line breaks
A hard CRLF in quoted-printable text represents a meaningful line break in the text. A soft break only wraps the encoded representation and does not add a text line break. Treating the two alike can change the decoded content.
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Why trailing spaces may look encoded
Spaces and tabs at the end of an encoded line must be represented using quoted-printable escapes. Mail systems may remove or add trailing whitespace, so leaving it literal could alter the data.
Why email uses quoted-printable
Quoted-printable is useful when content consists mostly of printable ASCII and retaining readability is valuable. Its design is a compromise between readable output and reliable transport: much of the text remains visible, while characters that are less safe to send literally are escaped.
The standard describes Base64 as an alternative that can provide greater confidence through some gateways. It is often the more suitable choice when content is arbitrary binary data or when line-break changes could corrupt the content. If binary data is represented using quoted-printable, CR and LF must themselves be escaped as =0D and =0A so that platform newline conventions do not change the bytes.
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| Consideration | Quoted-printable | Base64 |
|---|---|---|
| Mostly ASCII text | Often readable because safe printable characters can remain literal. | Encoded output is not intended to remain human-readable. |
| Arbitrary binary octets | Can represent them, but line-ending octets must be escaped to preserve the data. | Designed to represent arbitrary octets. |
| Line-oriented transport changes | Line handling matters; hard breaks and soft wraps have different meanings. | RFC 2045 says it may provide higher transport confidence through some gateways. |
Where the definition comes from
RFC 2045, “Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) Part One: Format of Internet Message Bodies,” was published by the RFC Editor in November 1996 and authored by Ned Freed and Nathaniel Borenstein. In section 6.7, they describe quoted-printable as intended for data “that largely consists of octets that correspond to printable characters in the US-ASCII character set.” The RFC Editor’s record is available at RFC 2045.
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