lamont@shiloh.UUCP (Lamont granquist) (07/07/90)
Has anyone out there ever considered patching uuencode & xxencode so that before the BEGIN line it sticks a line containing info like file size, etc?
roy@cs.umn.edu (Roy M. Silvernail) (07/07/90)
lamont@shiloh.UUCP (Lamont granquist) writes: > Has anyone out there ever considered patching uuencode & xxencode so that > before the BEGIN line it sticks a line containing info like file size, etc? Doesn't seem too efficient to me. {uu|xx}encode makes one pass on the file, encoding as it reads, and writing to an output file (often stdout). Such a modification would require either 2 passes on the file, creation of a tempfile (thus writing 2 files, and deleting one of them), or a monster buffer in memory. Now, a _trailing_ summary line could be easily added, and could be read with 'tail file.uue'. Less convenient for perusing ??encoded news articles, to be sure, but also less resource-intensive. Even DOS machines have 'tail' available. -- Roy M. Silvernail | 'I don't see why you people | Opinions found now available at: | seem to think this is magic... | herein are mine, cybrspc!roy@cs.umn.edu | Its just this little chromium | but you can rent (cyberspace... be here!)| switch here...[click]' | them.
silvert@cs.dal.ca (Bill Silvert) (07/07/90)
lamont@shiloh.UUCP (Lamont granquist) writes: > Has anyone out there ever considered patching uuencode & xxencode so that > before the BEGIN line it sticks a line containing info like file size, etc? Although I haven't seen this, there exist variants which offer better error checking. The Dumas encode (UUE and UUD) precedes the encoding with a translation table, so that if certain characters get changed on their way through some node, the file still decodes correctly (the most common problem is changing blanks and reverse quotes). The Dumas package also appends a check character to each line. These changes are ignored by uudecode, so full compatibility is maintained. -- William Silvert, Habitat Ecology Division, Bedford Inst. of Oceanography P. O. Box 1006, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, CANADA B2Y 4A2. Tel. (902)426-1577 UUCP=..!{uunet|watmath}!dalcs!biomel!bill BITNET=bill%biomel%dalcs@dalac InterNet=bill%biomel@cs.dal.ca