Convert base64 string to byte string

Why should one want that? Most of the time, the binary consumes much less memory, and if you are randomly reading bytes from it, its also much faster. Also writing it to a file is probably faster, as it can be read from continous memory, while writing from a list would mean to follow a pointer for each next byte.

Also binaries are much easier to handle if we want to match on exact bits.

So, do not convert from a binary to a list unless you really have to, and then you should be sure to use the correct conversion function.