Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!sunybcs!oswego!news
From: ostroff@penelope.oswego.edu (Boyd Ostroff)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: BinHex 4.0 vs. 5.0
Keywords: BinHex
Message-ID: <1989Dec24.032708.22203@oswego.Oswego.EDU>
Date: 24 Dec 89 03:27:08 GMT
References: <30103@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU>
Reply-To: ostroff@penelope.oswego.edu (Boyd Ostroff)
Organization: SUNY, Collego at Oswego
Lines: 28

In article <30103@shemp.CS.UCLA.EDU> david@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (David Dantowitz) writes:
>All the files I see here say MUST use BinHex 4.0.  I've seen 5.0 on some
>Macs... is this really 5.0?  

No.  When you use BinHex 4.0, it inserts the "This file must be converted 
with BinHex 4.0" header in the file.

>Why isn't 5.0 used elsewhere?
>

Two reasons: 

(1) BinHex 5.0 is shareware whereas 4.0 is public domain.

(2) Most importantly, BinHex 5.0 is "MacBinary" which converts files using
embedded control characters which will give you all kinds of grief if you
try to UUCP them, or edit them under UNIX.  BinHex 4.0 uses only printable
ASCII characters.

Bottom line is that you can use BinHex 5.0 to unpack files from comp.sys.mac
but not to pack them....

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