UUENCODE(1)

NAME
uuencode, - encode a binary file

SYNOPSIS
uuencode [-m] [-o output_file] [file] name

DESCRIPTION
The uuencode and uudecode(1) utilities are used to transmit binary files over transmission mediums that do not support other than simple ASCII data.

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(1).

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.

EXAMPLES
The following example packages up a source tree, compresses it, uuencodes it and mails it to a user on another system. When uudecode(1) 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

SEE ALSO
compress(1), mail(1), uucp(1), uudecode(1), uuencode(5)

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

HISTORY
The uudecode and uuencode utilities appeared in 4.0BSD.