A little while ago, the 'base64' methods were sensibly moved into their own module, Base64. But that means one has to do this: plain = Base64.decode64(encoded) encoded = Base64.encode64(plain) This would read better as plain = Base64.decode(encoded) encoded = Base64.encode(plain) Can we have aliases, please? In time for 1.8.2? I'd submit a patch but I don't have CVS access right now. Cheers, Gavin