Question about base64 and ssh public and private keys. I am trying to sign a document using a private key. Hoewever, I can't seem to get the base64 decoder to work on my key. It gives an error saying illegal character 2d.

Here is my code so far:

public static void signFile( File fileToSign, File sshPrivateKeyFile, File dstSignatureFile) {

Path privatePath = Paths.get(sshPrivateKeyFile.getAbsolutePath()); String privateString; privateString = new String(Files.readAllBytes(privatePath)); privateString = privateString.replace("-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----", ""); privateString = privateString.replace("-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY----- ", ""); byte[] decodedPrivate = Base64.getDecoder().decode(privateString.getBytes()); } }

I'm not sure about posting my actual key, so can someone help me with this?

Thanks.

I know I just posted this but I need to add something. I changed the part that removes the heading and am now getting the error:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Illegal base64 character a