Encode text to Base64, or decode a Base64 string back to text.
Decoding uses strict validation — text containing anything outside the Base64 alphabet is rejected with a clear error instead of silently producing garbled output.
Not every barcode is interchangeable — a retail scanner expects a specific format, and picking the wrong one means a code that simply won't scan at checkout.
Base64 output looks scrambled, which is exactly why people mistake it for security. It isn't — it's encoding, not encryption, and the difference matters.
A UUID looks like random noise, but the format is precise, and the odds of ever generating a duplicate are so small the math is almost more interesting than the ID itself.