News Group Posts

MIME vs uuencode

From: Jeff Liebermann <jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.sco.misc
Subject: Re: Mail
Message-ID: <ml1t7s4c6av45vd4etut2an66etudbr2bj@4ax.com> 
References: <jLx8ODGVaK1Or23zqgtv3Qv4nRfp@4ax.com>
<387CD49C.521EFDA@netscape.net>
<20000112182239.T4682@jpradley.jpr.com>
<387E56B7.8DB75594@netscape.net> 
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2000 18:26:29 -0800

On Thu, 13 Jan 2000 22:53:24 GMT, Scott Taylor <gstaylor@netscape.net>
wrote:

Jean-Pierre Radley wrote:

>> Bzzzt -- neither of those create an attachment.

><shrug>
>
>I beg to differ with you (again) JP.  I actually use the uuencode line
>in a script that sends a zipped spreadsheet to one of our customers that
>uses Netscrape to receive her mail, and all she has to do is click on
>the *attached* x-uuencoded file and save it to her Windoze hard drive.

Rat-tat-tat, braaaaap! (as in xdoom).

A uu-encoded file is a pre-packaged attachment similar to a MIME
attachment.  If you simply email a uuencoded file to a reasonably
smart MUA (mail user agent), it will recognize the uuencoded wrapper
and offer to decode it.  It works as an alternative to MIME.  There's
no need to MIME attach a uuencoded file as it would get treated as a
wrapper within a wrapper.

Every once in a while, I get nasty and send out MIME attachments with
a dozen levels of wrapping.  Older browsers (Netscape 3.0x) would just
blow up or refuse to do anything other than lock up or die.  The newer
browsers recognize this common mistake and look for content other than
what's inside the wrapper.  If it finds no content, it goes down level
after level until it finds the contents.  It then treats it as it were
a one level MIME attachment.  This is what happens when a dozen people
forward a joke in succession.  Each user adds another level of MIME
wrapper.  Viewed with a brain dead MUA (elm 2.4PL23) it looks awful.
Viewed with a reasonably smart MUA, it looks like just one level of
MIME packaging.

It is possible to have several versions of MIME attachment on one
level.  A friend has his resume packaged in ASCII text, PDF, HTML, and
Richtext in one MIME attachment.  Some browsers (Explorer 5) handle it
correctly and offer the user a choice of one.  Some other browsers
(Netscape) just dump all 4 files somewhere and then ask what to do.

>Why would I need mutt when I can do it my self by reading the man pages?

Try it without mutt using a GIF file or something other than uuencoded
text.  It won't work.  Keep reading.

2 comments

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Thu Jan 22 11:14:24 2009:   prashanthspark


iam trying to decode uuencode email which has attachments which is generated frm Richoh scanner & send to group email,
the email are able to view in lotus notes properly also when saved into outlook express as .eml, but when we try via code doesn t get into extracting attachments as well contents...

lotus script , C#

please advise :)

prashanthspark



Thu Jan 22 13:05:21 2009:   TonyLawrence


If uudecode won't decode it, it isn't a uuencoded file or it is damaged - or your script is just wrong.

Apparently it isn't damaged if Lotus and Outlook can unpack it. Sounds like your script is wrong or you are using a screwdriver where you need a knife or vice versa.



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