Uuencoding

Uuencoding, short for Unix-to-Unix encoding, is an encoding scheme used to transmit binary files over text-based communication channels, such as email or Usenet newsgroups. It converts arbitrary binary data into a sequence of printable ASCII characters. The process involves taking groups of three bytes of binary data and representing them as four ASCII characters. Each character in the encoded output represents six bits of the original data. A special character, typically a space, is prepended to each line of encoded data to indicate the number of bytes in that line. The encoding process also includes a header and a footer to mark the beginning and end of the encoded data. The header typically contains the filename and the permissions of the original file, while the footer simply signifies the end of the encoded content. Decoding reverses this process, converting the ASCII characters back into their original binary form. Uuencoding was widely used in the early days of the internet but has largely been superseded by more efficient and robust methods like MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) which can handle a wider variety of data types and encodings.