uuencode(1C)

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPERANDS | USAGE | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | OUTPUT | EXIT STATUS | ATTRIBUTES | SEE ALSO | NOTES

NAME

uuencode, uudecode– encode a binary file, or decode its encoded representation

SYNOPSIS

uuencode [source-file] decode_pathname
uudecode [-p] [encoded-file]

DESCRIPTION

uuencode

uuencode converts a binary file into an encoded representation 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 specified 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 utility will place the decoded file. If there are characters 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.

uudecode

The following operand is supported by uudecode:

encoded-file

The pathname of a file containing the output of uuencode.

USAGE

See largefile(5) for the description of the behavior of uuencode and uudecode when encountering files greater than or equal to 2 Gbyte ( 2³¹ 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 significant 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:

---

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 attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE	ATTRIBUTE VALUE
Availability	SUNWesu

SEE ALSO

mail(1), mailx(1), uucp(1C), uux(1C), attributes(5), largefile(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 (typically uucp) must have write permission on the file specified 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 Revised 28 Mar 1995

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPERANDS | USAGE | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | OUTPUT | EXIT STATUS | ATTRIBUTES | SEE ALSO | NOTES