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Annotation of researchv9/cmd/compress/btoa.1, revision 1.1.1.1

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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