title: How to generate a shorter base64 string?
body: <p>I am using</p>
  
  <pre><code>printf "%s%s" $url (date +%s) | base64
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>to generate a pseudo-unique string based on a URL and a time stamp:</p>
  
  <pre><code>cRH9qeL3XyVnaXJkppBuH20tf5JlcG9uFX1lL2IvdHRRRS9kMMQxOPLKNYIzQQ==
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>This is too long for me. Is there any way to <em>compress</em> or make the string just a bit shorter?</p>
  
  <p>Notes: I am using the generated string to create a directory in the file system and I can't use the original URL because it contains slashes and other punctuation and I would like to keep the checks at a minimum. <code>base64</code> seems like a very easy solution to generate a uniform alpha-numeric character string. If only I could make it <strong>shorter</strong>.</p>