Re: uuencode not working at all

[Bob Proulx]

Ben Gardiner wrote:
> I've used uuencode in the distant past but today on Linux I couldn't get it
> to create the .uue file.  After carefully re-reading the man page I used
> this command line:
> 
> uuencode INPUTFILE OUTPUTFILE

Hmm...  That doesn't look like the right uuencode syntax to me.  The
synopsys in the man page says:

  uuencode [-m] [ file ] name

Plus the example says:

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

[ Sometimes I miss those uucp days...  :-) ]

This means that you need to try something like this:

  uuencode FILENAME < INPUTFILE > OUTPUTFILE

> Formerly, as I remember it (20 years ago), the command went like this:
> 
> uuencode INPUTFILE OUTPUTFILE.uue  and the outputfile was 37% larger but
> safe to send by email.

It looks like you almost had it but just missed it.  I think with this
hint you will have it going now.

However I recommend that you use 'base64' these days.  This is the
much more commonly used encoding technique, especially for mail.  If
you were to attach a binary file to a mail message your mail agent
would convert the file to base64 automatically.  The use of base64 is
a little bit easier than uuencode.

A base64 program is available in the GNU coreutils package.  (There
are other implementations of base64 too.)  More information about GNU
coreutils is available here:

  http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/

  
http://www.gnu.org/software/coreutils/manual/html_node/base64-invocation.html#base64-invocation

Bob