UUENCODE : Java Glossary
home U words local find no local find frame, full screen Google search web for topic jump to footer translate with Babelfish by Roedy Green ©1996-2008 Canadian Mind Products
Go to : punctuation 0-9 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z (all)
UUENCODE
Non-Transparent channels don’t simply pass all characters through unmolested. They treat some of the characters as control characters — commands. In order to send arbitrary text down such channels, you need to convert the special characters into vanilla ones that can get through safely. One technique of converting a file into vanilla before sending is called UUENCODE, similar to BASE64. UUENCODE embeds a filename where BASE64 does not. The uuencode header looks like this:
begin 600 myfile.exe
where the 600 represents the Unix attribute bits in octal. UUENCODE uses the 64 characters ! through ` where base64 uses the 64 characters A..Z, a..z, 0..9 and + and /. UUENCODE encodes a 1-byte length byte on the front of each line, where the length includes the length byte. The length byte itself too is uuencoded. Typically all lines of a uuencoded file but the last are the same length. The uuencode trailer looks like this:
end
Uuencode does not have an RFC officially defining it. There are some variants out there to confuse. Sun has some unofficial support, the undocumented guts of a uuencode/decode called sun.misc.UUEncoder and sun.misc.UUDecoder

CMP_homejump to top
CMP logo
feedback Please email your feedback for publication, errors, omissions, broken/redirected link reports
and suggestions to improve this page to Roedy Green : feedback email
made with CSS
HTML Checked!
ICRA ratings logo
mindprod.com IP:[65.110.21.43]
Your face IP:[38.103.63.16] The information on this page is for non-military use only.
You are visitor number 13,928. Military use includes use by defence contractors.
You can get a fresh copy of this page from: or possibly from your local J: drive (Java virtual drive/Mindprod website mirror)
http://mindprod.com/jgloss/uuencode.html J:\mindprod\jgloss\uuencode.html