moews@husc4.harvard.edu (david moews) (10/13/86)
In article <1346@lsuc.UUCP> jimomura@lsuc.UUCP (Jim Omura) writes: > > ...I decoded it [UNITERM] last night and it didn't run. The ending of the >encode looks a bit funny to me. The last line didn't start with >an 'M' like the rest.... The last (nonblank) line of UUENCODEd files doesn't have to start with an 'M'; the ASCII code of the first character in each line is 32 + the number of bytes that the line will decode to (so 'M' = 45 bytes, after decoding). Thus, if the total number of bytes in the original file is not a multiple of 45, the last nonblank line will be shorter than normal and will start with some character other than an 'M'. Here's an example: I took the following 2 lines (93 bytes) This is a test file to demonstrate UUENCODE. This is the second, and last, line of the file. and UUENCODEd them; the result is begin 644 file M5&AI<R!I<R!A('1E<W0@9FEL92!T;R!D96UO;G-T<F%T92!5545.0T]$12X* M5&AI<R!I<R!T:&4@<V5C;VYD+"!A;F0@;&%S="P@;&EN92!O9B!T:&4@9FEL #92X* end . The '#' in the last line indicates that after the 90 bytes contained in the first two lines, there are 3 bytes left over. -- David Moews moews@husc4.harvard.edu ...!seismo!harvard!husc4!moews