DragonFly On-Line Manual Pages

UUENCODE(1)            DragonFly General Commands Manual           UUENCODE(1)

NAME
     uuencode, uudecode, b64encode, b64decode -- encode/decode a binary file

SYNOPSIS
     uuencode [-m] [-o output_file] [file] name
     uudecode [-cimprs] [file ...]
     uudecode [-i] -o output_file
     b64encode [-o output_file] [file] name
     b64decode [-cimprs] [file ...]
     b64decode [-i] -o output_file [file]

DESCRIPTION
     The uuencode and uudecode utilities are used to transmit binary files
     over transmission mediums that do not support other than simple ASCII
     data.  The b64encode utility is synonymous with uuencode with the -m flag
     specified.  The b64decode utility is synonymous with uudecode with the -m
     flag specified.

     The uuencode utility reads file (or by default the standard input) and
     writes an encoded version to the standard output, or output_file if one
     has been specified.  The encoding uses only printing ASCII characters and
     includes the mode of the file and the operand name for use by uudecode.

     The uudecode utility transforms uuencoded files (or by default, the
     standard input) into the original form.  The resulting file is named
     either name or (depending on options passed to uudecode) output_file and
     will have the mode of the original file except that setuid and execute
     bits are not retained.  The uudecode utility ignores any leading and
     trailing lines.

     The following options are available for uuencode:

     -m     Use the Base64 method of encoding, rather than the traditional
            uuencode algorithm.

     -o output_file
            Output to output_file instead of standard output.

     The following options are available for uudecode:

     -c     Decode more than one uuencoded file from file if possible.

     -i     Do not overwrite files.

     -m     When used with the -r flag, decode Base64 input instead of
            traditional uuencode input.  Without -r it has no effect.

     -o output_file
            Output to output_file instead of any pathname contained in the
            input data.

     -p     Decode file and write output to standard output.

     -r     Decode raw (or broken) input, which is missing the initial and
            possibly the final framing lines.  The input is assumed to be in
            the traditional uuencode encoding, but if the -m flag is used, or
            if the utility is invoked as b64decode, then the input is assumed
            to be in Base64 format.

     -s     Do not strip output pathname to base filename.  By default
            uudecode deletes any prefix ending with the last slash '/' for
            security reasons.

EXAMPLES
     The following example packages up a source tree, compresses it, uuencodes
     it and mails it to a user on another system.  When uudecode is run on the
     target system, the file ``src_tree.tar.Z'' will be created which may then
     be uncompressed and extracted into the original tree.

           tar cf - src_tree | compress |
           uuencode src_tree.tar.Z | mail sys1!sys2!user

     The following example unpacks all uuencoded files from your mailbox into
     your current working directory.

           uudecode -c < $MAIL

     The following example extracts a compressed tar archive from your mailbox

           uudecode -o /dev/stdout < $MAIL | zcat | tar xfv -

SEE ALSO
     basename(1), compress(1), mail(1), uucp(1) (net/freebsd-uucp),
     uuencode(5)

HISTORY
     The uudecode and uuencode utilities appeared in 4.0BSD.

BUGS
     Files encoded using the traditional algorithm are expanded by 35% (3
     bytes become 4 plus control information).

DragonFly 4.7                  January 27, 2002                  DragonFly 4.7