djb@wjh12.harvard.edu (David J. Birnbaum) (02/05/89)
Uuencoded files are not transferred reliably over Bitnet because the ASCII/EBCDIC conversion can trash certain characters. I have seen mention of some alternative binary/ASCII conversion systems that rely on a more limited number of characters. One that I have heard men- tioned is called 'btoa/atob' and uses only comma, period, a-z, A-Z, and 0-9 (64 characters that are identical in ASCII and EBCDIC). I have also heard mention of a system that translates each byte of a binary file into its hex representation, thereby doubling the size of the file and using only 16 different characters. If anyone has access to any of these alternatives to uuencode, could they please submit them for posting in the binaries group? Thanks. --David ======================================================================= David J. Birnbaum djb@wjh12.harvard.edu [Internet] 11 Adams Terrace djb@wjh12.uucp [UUCP] Cambridge, MA 02138 USA djb@harvunxw.bitnet [Bitnet] =======================================================================
limonce@pilot.njin.net (Tom Limoncelli) (02/05/89)
Of course, there is a newer version of uu*code that does not use the
characters that Bitnet fouls up. I have a VAX/VMS version that I can
send to people though I believe that the latest Unix distribution has
the "corrected" version of uu*coded. The latest version for the Amiga
is "corrected" as are most versions (other computers).
I guess it's time to upgrade the IBM PC version :-)
-Tom
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Tom Limoncelli -- tlimonce@drunivac.Bitnet -- limonce@pilot.njin.net
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er.harper@cc.helsinki.fi (ROBERT HARPER FINLAND) (02/08/89)
In article <328@wjh12.harvard.edu>, djb@wjh12.harvard.edu (David J. Birnbaum) writes: > If anyone has access to any of these alternatives to uuencode, could > they please submit them for posting in the binaries group? Thanks. I obtained a utility from a friend at University of Guelph on Canada called UTIL3.EXE which we have used to transfer binary files between Finland and Canada. It may be that he has already donated it to SIMTEL20 archives. It has worked we for us and that is making transfers between IBM/CMS and VAX/VMS which may be the worse of all possible situations for getting files trashed. UTIL3.EXE also has the added bonus that it will also do a UUDECODE for you if you want. -=ROB=-