Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!bbn!husc6!wjh12!djb
From: djb@wjh12.harvard.edu (David J. Birnbaum)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: ASCII/BINARY conversion
Message-ID: <328@wjh12.harvard.edu>
Date: 4 Feb 89 23:19:23 GMT
Reply-To: djb@wjh12.UUCP (David J. Birnbaum)
Organization: Harvard University, Cambridge MA
Lines: 20

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

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David J. Birnbaum             djb@wjh12.harvard.edu [Internet]
11 Adams Terrace              djb@wjh12.uucp [UUCP]
Cambridge, MA 02138 USA       djb@harvunxw.bitnet [Bitnet]
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