mimencode(1)

mimencode -- translate mail-oriented encoding formats

Synopsis

mimencode [-u] [-b] [-q] [-p] [filename]

Description

The mimencode program is a format translator that simply converts a byte stream into (or out of) one of the standard mail encoding formats defined by MIME, the proposed standard for Internet multimedia mail formats.

By default, mimencode reads from the standard input and sends a base64-encoded version of the input to standard output.

Options

mimencode uses the following command line options:

-b: Use base64 encoding (not necessary to specify since this is the default).
-q: Use the quoted-printable encoding instead of base64.
-u: Decode standard input rather than encode it.
-p: Translate decoded CRLF sequences into the local newline convention during decoding and to do the reverse during encoding. This option is only meaningful when -b (base64 encoding) is in effect.

If a filename is specified, read input from the named file rather than from standard input.

Usage

MIME encoding is used because binary data cannot be sent through the mail. The encodings understood by mimencode may be preferable to those used by uuencode and uudecode.

mimencode is intended to replace uuencode for mail and news use, primarily because uuencode may use characters that do not translate well across all mail gateways (particularly ASCII/EBCDIC gateways).

mimencode implements the encodings which were defined for MIME as uuencode replacements and is expected to be more robust for email use.

References

metamail(1), mailto(1)

Notices

Author is Nathaniel S. Borenstein, Bell Communications Research, Inc. See copyright page for further information.