Re: Why BinSCII?

[mnementh@netcom.com (David R. Villegas)]

khym@bga.com (Khym Mahn) wrote:
>>Since most of the binaries posts are Shrinkit archives, is there an advantage
>>to using binscii rather than uuencode?  Considering that a good number of
>
>Yes, uuencode sucks big time :-) You have to cut headers, make sure
>the pieces are in the right order, and all that stuff. Yes, I know
>there are utilities that automate that, but like sciibin, you'll
>probably have to compile them :) The Binscii format is more robust
>than uuencode.

The version of uudecode that I use handles headers and footers well.

But decoding a split file is the key.  Steven Nelson pointed out that parts
of a binscii'd file can be decoded in any order and do not need to be decoded
at the same time.  Indeed, bsc's ability to create file segments is a lot more
elegant than piping uuencode through split.

Also, binscii seems to be a more compact format than uudecode.

I'm now wondering why a non-Apple-specific version of binscii isn't a standard
on the net.  I've only seen uuencoded and mimencoded files and the latter
mess up often enough that I'd pull my hair out at the sight of a mime header.