Unix Third Edition: Visual Quickstart Guide

13.2. Decoding Files with uudecode

You’ll decode files whenever you receive binary files through email—it’s the only way you can use encoded files. Although most email programs and news readers will take care of decoding files for you (and, therefore, you won’t need the information here), you may need to do it manually on occasion. (Hint: If you open up a file or an email message and see something like Code Listing 13.3, you’ve got a little decoding to do. To avoid the gibberish, decode your files, as shown in Code Listing 13.4.

Code Listing 13.3. Use the head command to view the top of a file. The “begin” line is the tipoff that is’a uuencoded file, with 644 permissions and the name of rowboat.jpg.

[ejr@hobbes compression]$ head rowboat.uue ...