What is the Basic function to encode the password upon the authentication..

From: Scott Fletcher (scott_at_abcoa.com)
Date: 12/31/03 

To: php-general@lists.php.net
Date: Tue, 30 Dec 2003 18:14:59 -0500

Hi!

    What is the function exactly for encoding the user's typed password in
PHP after the HTTP Authentication pop-up window by Apache was submitted? I
tried the base64_encode() but it is not the right function. The
authentication header here is ..

--snip--
     header('WWW-Authenticate: Basic realm="My Private Stuff"');
     header('HTTP/1.0 401 Unauthorized');
--snip--

Thanks,
 FletchSOD