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Annotation of researchv9/cmd/compress/btoa.1, revision 1.1

1.1     ! root        1: .TH BTOA 1 local
        !             2: .SH NAME
        !             3: btoa, atob, tarmail, untarmail \- encode/decode binary to printable ASCII
        !             4: .SH SYNOPSIS
        !             5: .B btoa
        !             6: .br
        !             7: .B atob
        !             8: .br
        !             9: .B tarmail
        !            10: who subject files ...
        !            11: .br
        !            12: .B untarmail
        !            13: [ file ]
        !            14: .SH DESCRIPTION
        !            15: .I Btoa
        !            16: is a filter that reads anything from the standard input, and encodes it into
        !            17: printable ASCII on the standard output.  It also attaches a header and checksum
        !            18: information used by the reverse filter 
        !            19: .I atob 
        !            20: to find the start of the data and to check integrity.
        !            21: .PP
        !            22: .I Atob
        !            23: reads an encoded file, strips off any leading and
        !            24: trailing lines added by mailers, and recreates a copy of the original file
        !            25: on the standard output.
        !            26: .I Atob 
        !            27: gives NO output (and exits with an error message) if its input is garbage or 
        !            28: the checksums do not check.
        !            29: .PP
        !            30: .I Tarmail
        !            31: is a shell script that tar's up all the given files, pipes them 
        !            32: through 
        !            33: .IR compress ","
        !            34: .IR btoa ","
        !            35: and mails them to the given person with the given subject phrase.  For
        !            36: example:
        !            37: .PP
        !            38: .in 1i
        !            39: tarmail ralph "here it is ralph" foo.c a.out
        !            40: .in -1i
        !            41: .PP
        !            42: Will package up files "foo.c" and "a.out" and mail them to "ralph" using
        !            43: subject "here it is ralph".  Notice the quotes on the subject.  They are
        !            44: necessary to make it one argument to the shell.
        !            45: .PP
        !            46: .I Tarmail 
        !            47: with no args will print a short message reminding you what the required args 
        !            48: are.  When the mail is received at the other end, that person should use
        !            49: mail to save the message in some temporary file name (say "xx").
        !            50: Then saying "untarmail xx"
        !            51: will decode the message and untar it.  
        !            52: .I Untarmail 
        !            53: can also be used as a filter.  By using 
        !            54: .IR tarmail ","
        !            55: binary files and
        !            56: entire directory structures can be easily transmitted between machines.
        !            57: Naturally, you should understand what tar itself does before you use 
        !            58: .IR tarmail "."
        !            59: .PP
        !            60: Other uses:
        !            61: .PP
        !            62: compress < secrets | crypt | btoa | mail ralph
        !            63: .PP
        !            64: will mail the encrypted contents of the file "secrets" to ralph.  If ralph
        !            65: knows the encryption key, he can decode it by saving the mail (say in "xx"),
        !            66: and then running:
        !            67: .PP
        !            68: atob < xx | crypt | uncompress
        !            69: .PP
        !            70: (crypt requests the key from the terminal,
        !            71: and the "secrets" come out on the terminal).
        !            72: .SH AUTHOR
        !            73: Paul Rutter (modified by Joe Orost)
        !            74: .SH FEATURES
        !            75: .I Btoa
        !            76: uses a compact base-85 encoding so that
        !            77: 4 bytes are encoded into 5 characters (file is expanded by 25%).
        !            78: As a special case, 32-bit zero is encoded as one character.  This encoding
        !            79: produces less output than
        !            80: .IR uuencode "(1)."
        !            81: .SH "SEE ALSO"
        !            82: compress(1), crypt(1), uuencode(1), mail(1)

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