Base64 encoding in C

static const std::string base64_chars =  "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
                                         "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"
                                         "0123456789+/";


std::string base64_encode(unsigned char const* bytes_to_encode, unsigned int in_len)
{
    std::string ret;
    int i = 0;
    int j = 0;
    unsigned char char_array_3[3];
    unsigned char char_array_4[4];

    while (in_len--) {
        char_array_3[i++] = *(bytes_to_encode++);
        if (i == 3) {
            char_array_4[0] = (char_array_3[0] & 0xfc) >> 2;
            char_array_4[1] = ((char_array_3[0] & 0x03) << 4) + ((char_array_3[1] & 0xf0) >> 4);
            char_array_4[2] = ((char_array_3[1] & 0x0f) << 2) + ((char_array_3[2] & 0xc0) >> 6);
            char_array_4[3] = char_array_3[2] & 0x3f;

            for(i = 0; (i <4) ; i++) ret += base64_chars[char_array_4[i]];
            i = 0;
        }
    }

    if (i) {
        for(j = i; j < 3; j++) char_array_3[j] = '\0';

        char_array_4[0] = (char_array_3[0] & 0xfc) >> 2;
        char_array_4[1] = ((char_array_3[0] & 0x03) << 4) + ((char_array_3[1] & 0xf0) >> 4);
        char_array_4[2] = ((char_array_3[1] & 0x0f) << 2) + ((char_array_3[2] & 0xc0) >> 6);
        char_array_4[3] = char_array_3[2] & 0x3f;

        for (j = 0; (j < i + 1); j++) ret += base64_chars[char_array_4[j]];

        while((i++ < 3)) ret += '=';
    }

    return ret;
}