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Path: utzoo!mnetor!seismo!ut-sally!husc6!harvard!adelie!mirror!jvc
From: jvc@mirror.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Corruption on the net Re: ARC520
Message-ID: <206900038@mirror>
Date: Fri, 15-May-87 08:01:00 EDT
Article-I.D.: mirror.206900038
Posted: Fri May 15 08:01:00 1987
Date-Received: Sun, 17-May-87 00:28:15 EDT
References: <2006@whuts.UUCP>
Lines: 79
Nf-ID: #R:whuts.UUCP:-200600:mirror:206900038:000:2759
Nf-From: mirror.UUCP!jvc    May 15 08:01:00 1987


/* Written  7:52 am  May 15, 1987 by jvc@mirror.UUCP in comp.sys.ibm.pc */
>I too tried to download the ARC program and experienced the same errors.
>It appears that the program is corrupt on both coasts.  Could we see a
>reposting?
>-- Scott

A reposting won't help unless the mailer that caused the problem  (removing
trailing  spaces  from lines) is fixed.  There was a program posted (source
~20 lines) that would fix ARC and any other  uuencoded  files  that  suffer
this affliction.  Attached is a copy of the program that was posted.

Maybe the mailer isn't broken.  Could it  be  a  new  feature  intended  to
reduce the size of the file by removing unnecessary trailing spaces?  Maybe
uu??code should be rewritten to have both a start and  stop  character  for
each  line (other than a space) so that there will never be trailing spaces
to be deleted.

Note for those who haven't figured out what happened to  the  ARC  posting:
-After the header, each line in a uuencode file has an M as the first
 character followed by 60 ascii text characters.
-The space character is one of the characters used.
-Somebody's mailer is deleting trailing spaces from each line.
-If the last character of the 60 characters is a space then that same
 mailer will delete it.
-If that last character is deleted then uudecode will not produce the
 correct results.

Take a look at the file and see for yourself.  The 46th line after the line
that says 'begin' should have a space as the last character but a mailer has
truncated that line.  There are other lines but I'm not going to list  them
since the program listed below will find and fix them for you.

------------------------- cut here -----------------------------------
/* Written  3:53 pm  Apr 18, 1987 by Fisch@cui.UUCP in comp.sys.ibm.pc */

/* Written by
   uucp:                 mcvax!cernvax!cui!Fisch / Fisch@cui.uucp
   X400/ean:             Fisch@cui.unige.chunet
   bitnet/earn:          Fisch%cui.unige.chunet@cernvax
*/
/*
    Try to repair uuencoded files when trailing space has been removed.
    It pads short lines with spaces whenever needed.
    It reads from stdin and writes to stdout.

        use: pgm <uuencoded > repaired
             uudecode repaired

        or:  pgm <uuencoded | uudecode

    If it doesn't work, I can't help you.
*/

#include <stdio.h>

main()
  {
    char c;
    int tab, len;

    tab = 0;
    while ((c = getchar()) != EOF)
      {
        if (tab == 0)
          {
            if (' '<=c && c<='Z') len = ((c-' '+2)/3)*4+1;
            else len = 1;
          }
        if (c == '0)
          {
            while (tab++<len) putchar(' ');
            tab = 0;
          }
        else tab++;
        putchar (c);
      }
  }
/* end of text */