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

#!/usr/bin/env lua
-- Lua 5.1+ base64 v3.0 (c) 2009 by Alex Kloss <alexthkloss@web.de>
-- licensed under the terms of the LGPL2

-- character table string
local b='ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZabcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz0123456789+/'

-- encoding
function enc(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

-- decoding
function dec(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

-- command line if not called as library
if (arg ~= nil) then
    local func = 'enc'
    for n,v in ipairs(arg) do
        if (n > 0) then
            if (v == "-h") then print "base64.lua [-e] [-d] text/data" break
            elseif (v == "-e") then func = 'enc'
            elseif (v == "-d") then func = 'dec'
            else print(_G[func](v)) end
        end
    end
else
    module('base64',package.seeall)
end