by Here is a summary of responses on my question concering sending binary files
by e-mail:
- Use the uuencode & uudecode commmands found on most UNIX machines. These
commands translate 8-bit binaries into 7-bit ASCII characters to include
in your e-mail. You may want to compress the binary files before using
the uuencode/uudecode commands. The binaries could come from any platform,
DOS, Mac, etc. One thing to note is some sites have a maximum size of files
to handle via e-mail. Therefore, you may want to break your file after
trasnlation into chunks and e-mail into pieces. Here are some examples of
encoding and decoding on the other end:
compress file (gives file.Z)
uuencode file.Z > file.uu
Then cut the file into pieces and include them in your e-mail.
The recepient takes these files and concatenates them into one file
(after editing out the headers) then:
uudecode file.uu > file.Z
uncompress file.Z
- A very good place to start to learn about these issues is th comp.binaries.*,
esp. comp.binaries.ibm.pc - there are FAQs about this.
- There are also C versions of PKZIP and other programs at some ftp sites
(I was never told where) that you can download to compile on non-UNIX
machines for the same purpose. Major DOS archive sites include
wsmr-simtel.army.mil and wuarchive.wustl.edu.
- For Mac users, you can use something ilke Stuffit (shareware) to binhex files.
- For those interested in sending big files via e-mail, not necessarily
binaries, e.g., large postscript files, there are anonymous ftp sites
that permit users to upload their files to public directories for others
to download.
on most ftp sites. Send 'help' to the above address for more information.
Hope that helps. Thank you very much all who responded.
Aladdin Nassar
Civil Engineer
Stanford University