gnu@hoptoad.uucp (John Gilmore) (09/25/86)
In article <8609121915.AA27613@mitre-bedford.ARPA>, jhs@MITRE-BEDFORD.ARPA writes: > I was giving myself fits trying to uuencode a file on the VAX... > uuencode apparently takes the first argument > to be that string and assumes that you meant to type in your binary file at > the keyboard. (Sounds like a silly assumption to me, but I didn't write > uuencode.) Uuencode is assuming that you know about standard input and output. Since you used standard output redirection, (the > sign), it sounds like a reasonable assumption. This lets you pipe things to uuencode, for example. > To uuencode into a local file, I found the following syntax to be necessary > (or at any rate sufficient, which is sufficient!): > > uuencode inputfilename anystring >output filename You could also use: uuencode anystring <input >output I agree that uuencode's command line leaves something to be desired. It would've been better to make the "destination string" be an option (eg uuencode -d deststring input >output). I just thought I'd remind people that "programs that default to reading from the keyboard" are really "programs that default to reading standard input" -- a good thing. -- John Gilmore {sun,ptsfa,lll-crg,ihnp4}!hoptoad!gnu jgilmore@lll-crg.arpa May the Source be with you!