Re: uuencode not working at all

[Ben Gardiner]

Hi Bob -

Thanks for your suggestion to use base64 in the GNU coreutils package and
the URL for it.

This syntax sent to me works okay:

cat INFILE | uuencode - >OUTFILE

which I got from Bauke Jan Douma, not from the man page, and he drew
attention to the essential hyphen in the line.

However I have decided on another strategy, since the uuencoded file is so
big it needs to be split in order to pass through various email gates.  The
other strategy is simply to establish a login account for my client and put
the HUGE file there rather than email it to them.

Another mode of transmission that works fine is by scp but I do not want to
automate that because of the need for a password at the receiving end.

It was indeed simpler in former years.

Ben


On 2/2/08, Bob Proulx <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> 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
>



-- 
From:  Ben Gardiner
Return address:  address@hidden