| UUENCODE(1) | General Commands Manual | UUENCODE(1) | 
uuencode, uudecode —
| uuencode | [ -m] [inputfile]
      headername | 
| uudecode | [ -m] [-p|-ooutputfile]
      [encoded-file ...] | 
uuencode and uudecode are used
  to transmit binary files over transmission mediums that do not support other
  than simple ASCII data.
The following options are available:
-muuencode, the historical
      uuencode algorithm is the default. For uudecode,
      by default the encoding is automatically detected.-o
    outputfileuudecode only.) Send the
      decoded output data to outputfile. By default,
      uudecode uses the headername
      recorded in the header of the encoded data stream.-puudecode only.) Write the
      decoded file to standard output instead of to a file.uuencode reads
    inputfile (or by default the standard input) and
    writes an encoded version to (always) the standard output. The encoding uses
    only printing ASCII characters suitable for text-only transport media. The
    string headername is inserted into the output header
    as the outputfile to use at
    uudecode time. The header also includes the mode
    (permissions) of the file.
uudecode transforms
    uuencoded files (or by default, the standard input) into
    the original form. The resulting file is named
    headername as recorded in the encoded file, or as
    specified by the -o option, and will have the mode
    of the original file except that setuid and execute bits are not retained.
    If the -p option is specified, or if the output file
    name is given as /dev/stdout, then the data will be
    written to the standard output instead of to a named file.
    uudecode ignores any leading and trailing lines.
The encoded form of the file is expanded by 35%. Every 3 bytes become 4 plus control information.
uudecode and uuencode
  utilities exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
tar czf - src_tree | uuencode src_tree.tgz | mail user@example.com
On the other system, if the user saves the mail to the file temp, the following example creates the file src_tree.tgz and extracts it to make a copy of the original tree.
uudecode temp tar xzf src_tree.tgz
uudecode and uuencode
  utilities conform to IEEE Std 1003.1-2008
  (“POSIX.1”).
uudecode and uuencode
  utilities appeared in 4.0BSD.
uudecode with files coming from dubious
  sources, always either explicitly pass the -o option
  or check the header (the first line) of the encoded file for safety. Blindly
  using a headername from a hostile source can overwrite
  important files.
| September 6, 2014 | NetBSD 10.1 |