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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!mcvax!unido!iaoobelix!wagner
From: wagner@iaoobelix.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: General file transfer by E-mail - (nf)
Message-ID: <8200005@iaoobelix.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 6-Apr-87 16:34:00 EST
Article-I.D.: iaoobeli.8200005
Posted: Mon Apr  6 16:34:00 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 21-Apr-87 02:27:21 EST
References: <1824@vax135.UUCP>
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Nf-ID: #R:vax135:-182400:iaoobelix:8200005:000:1823
Nf-From: iaoobelix!wagner    Apr  6 22:34:00 1987


I suggest the package atob/btoa (ascii to binary) which is (tell me if I'm
wrong) in the public domain. This package comes with compress 4.0 and contains
some nice utilities to send arbitrary files (even directory structures) via
email. I have received the files from Jeff Peck (peck@sun.com).

Tarmail works as follows:

You make a somehow large and bulky file in tar format, pipe it into compress,
convert it (by means of btoa) to a simple text file (i.e. a file containing no
control chars) and just mail it over to the people you want. If the entire
file gets too large, I use the slice utility (the one you have to be careful
not to slice the crt) to split up the large file into smaller pieces. Upon
receipt at the remote site, the pieces can be glued together and unpacked
using untarmail.

Although it is very rarely the case that I am mailing binaries (i.e.
precompiled files), I found tarmail very useful to sent out non-text data
files or whole directory trees in a quite compact format. And as far as I can
see these programs are quite portable (I compiled them without changes on a
VAX/BSD4.2, a Sun/OS3.2 and a uVAX/ULTRIX, what is surprising, anyway, if I
think of experiences with nice little incompatibilities among these machines
and *IXes).

Well, that's my experience with tarmail and friends. I hope this is of use
(and doesn't lead to an overflow of Jeff's mailbox :-).

Juergen Wagner,		      USENET: ...seismo!unido!iaoobel!wagner
("Gandalf")			or	  ...!pyramid!iaoobel!wagner

Mail:	Juergen Wagner
	Fraunhofer-Institut IAO
	Rosenbergstr. 28
	D-7000 Stuttgart 1
	Federal Republic of Germany
Phone:	+ 49 711 6648-205

"If you put garbage in a computer nothing comes out but garbage. But this
 garbage, having passed through a very expensive machine, is somehow enobled
 and none dare criticize it."