uuencode
Communication Commands uuencode(1C)NAME
uuencode, uudecode - encode a binary file, or decode its encoded representationSYNOPSIS
uuencode [ source-file ] decode_pathname uudecode [ -p ] [ encoded-file ]DESCRIPTION
uuencode uuencode converts a binary file into an encoded representa- tion that can be sent using mail(1). It encodes the contents of source-file, or the standard input if no source-file argument is given. The decode_pathname argument is required. The decode_pathname is included in the encoded file's header as the name of the file into which uudecode is to place the binary (decoded) data. uuencode also includes the permission modes of source-file, (except setuid , setgid, and sticky- bits), so that decode_pathname is recreated with those same permission modes. uudecode uudecode reads an encoded-file, strips off any leading and trailing lines added by mailer programs, and recreates the original binary data with the filename and the mode speci- fied in the header. The encoded file is an ordinary portable character set text file; it can be edited by any text editor. It is best only to change the mode or decode_pathname in the header to avoid corrupting the decoded binary.OPTIONS
uudecode -p decode encoded-file and send it to standard output. This allows uudecode to be used in a pipeline.OPERANDS
uuencode The following operands are supported by uuencode: decode_pathname The pathname of the file into which the uudecode util- ity will place the decoded file. If there are charac- ters in decode_pathname that are not in the portable filename character set the results are unspecified. source-file A pathname of the file to be encoded. SunOS 5.8 Last change: 28 Mar 1995 1 Communication Commands uuencode(1C) uudecode The following operand is supported by uudecode: encoded-file The pathname of a file containing the output of uuen- code. USAGE See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of uuencode and uudecode when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2**31 bytes). ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES See environ(5) for descriptions of the following environment variables that affect the execution of uuencode and uudecode: LC_CTYPE, LC_MESSAGES, and NLSPATH. OUTPUT stdout The standard output is a text file (encoded in the character set of the current locale) that begins with the line: "begin%s%s\n", <mode>, decode_pathname and ends with the line: end\n In both cases, the lines have no preceding or trailing blank characters. The algorithm that is used for lines in between begin and end takes three octets as input and writes four characters of output by splitting the input at six-bit intervals into four octets, containing data in the lower six bits only. These octets are converted to characters by adding a value of 0x20 to each octet, so that each octet is in the range 0x20-0x5f, and then it is assumed to represent a printable character. It then will be translated into the corresponding character codes for the codeset in use in the current locale. (For example, the octet 0x41, representing A , would be translated to A in the current codeset, such as 0xc1 if it were EBCDIC.) Where the bits of two octets are combined, the least signi- ficant bits of the first octet are shifted left and combined with the most significant bits of the second octet shifted right. Thus the three octets A, B, C are converted into the four octets: SunOS 5.8 Last change: 28 Mar 1995 2 Communication Commands uuencode(1C) 0x20 + (( A >> 2 ) & 0x3F) 0x20 + (((A << 4) ((B >> 4) & 0xF)) & 0x3F) 0x20 + (((B << 2) ((C >> 6) & 0x3)) & 0x3F) 0x20 + (( C ) & 0x3F) These octets are then translated into the local character set. Each encoded line contains a length character, equal to the number of characters to be decoded plus 0x20 translated to the local character set as described above, followed by the encoded characters. The maximum number of octets to be encoded on each line is 45. EXIT STATUS The following exit values are returned: 0 Successful completion. >0 An error occurred.ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attri- butes: ____________________________________________________________ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | |_____________________________|_____________________________| | Availability | SUNWesu | |_____________________________|_____________________________|SEE ALSO
mail(1), mailx(1), uucp(1C), uux(1C), attributes(5), large- file(5)NOTES
The encoded file's size is expanded by 35% (3 bytes become 4, plus control information), causing it to take longer to transmit than the equivalent binary. The user on the remote system who is invoking uudecode (typ- ically uucp) must have write permission on the file speci- fied in the decode_pathname. If you uuencode then uudecode a file in the same directory, you will overwrite the original file. SunOS 5.8 Last change: 28 Mar 1995 3