uudeview(1)



UUDEVIEW(1)                 General Commands Manual                UUDEVIEW(1)

NAME
       UUDeview - a powerful decoder for binary files

SYNOPSIS
       uudeview [options] [@file] file(s)

DESCRIPTION
       UUDeview  is  a smart decoder for attachments that you have received in
       encoded form via electronic mail or from the usenet. It is  similar  to
       the  standard  uudecode(1) command, yet with more comfort and flexibil-
       ity.  UUDeview supports the uuencoding, xxencoding,  Base64,  yEncoding
       and  BinHex  encoding methods, and is able to handle split-files (which
       have been sent in multiple parts) as well as multiple  files  at  once,
       thus  greatly  simplifying  the decoding process. Usually, you will not
       have to manually edit files to prepare them for decoding.

       After invoking uudeview, it will scan all given files for encoded data,
       sort  them  and their parts and then present you with the list of files
       that seem like they can be decoded properly. You can  then  pick  files
       individually for decoding.

OPTIONS
   BEHAVIOR
       -i     Disables interactivity. After scanning the files and sorting ev-
              erything out, the program will not prompt you for whether a file
              shall  be decoded or not, but batch-decodes all available files.
              This is the default when reading from standard input.

       -a     Autorename option. If a target file already exists, and this op-
              tion is given, a dot and a unique sequence number is appended to
              the file name.  I.e., foo.gif becomes  foo.gif.1  if  decoded  a
              second time.

       +a     An  alternative  incarnation of autorename. If a target file al-
              ready exists, an underscore and a unique sequence number is  in-
              serted into the filename before the first dot, i.e., foo.gif be-
              comes foo_1.gif.

       -o     Gives the OK to overwrite existing files when decoding.  In  in-
              teractive  mode,  the  default  is to prompt the user whether to
              overwrite, rename or skip the file. This option takes precedence
              over -a.  In non-interactive mode (using -f ), the default is to
              overwrite files without asking.

       +o     Says it's not OK to overwrite files. This is useful  in  non-in-
              teractive  mode,  so that existing files are untouched. This has
              lesser precedence than -a.

       -c     Autoclear. Remove all input files  that  were  successfully  de-
              coded.  Use  with care! UUDeview only checks if any data was de-
              coded from an input file, but does not care about any other con-
              tents  of that input file, or whether a file also held an incom-
              plete attachment.

       -p path
              Sets the path where decoded files shall be written to. This must
              be  a valid pathname, or you'll get errors when trying to decode
              anything. Defaults to the current working directory.

       -m     Ignore file mode. Uuencoded and xxencoded files have the  origi-
              nal  file  permissions stored on the begin line. Unless this op-
              tion is given, UUDeview will restore them  without  checking  if
              they  are  sensible. With this option, the permissions are reset
              to a default of 0666.

   TWEAKING
       -z     Enforces stricter MIME adherance. Normally, the program tries to
              find  encoded  data even in "text/plain" plaintext parts of MIME
              messages. With this option given, UUDeview will limit this capa-
              bility,  and  will not accept apparently incomplete encoded mes-
              sages (for example, seemingly uuencoded data  without  begin  or
              end  lines).   You can tighten this option even more by using it
              twice, or by using -z2.  Then, UUDeview will not check plaintext
              sections  of  MIME  messages  for encoded data at all and behave
              fully MIME-compliant.  Neither option affects  the  behavior  on
              non-MIME  input  files. This option needs a better name, but I'm
              slowly running out of option letters.

       -f     Uses fast mode for file scanning. The program assumes that  each
              input  file  holds  at  most one part, which is usually true for
              files in a news spool directory. This option breaks decoding  of
              input  files with multiple articles. Also, certain sanity checks
              are disabled, probably causing erroneous files to  be  presented
              for  decoding.   Sometimes you'll get error messages when decod-
              ing, sometimes you'll just receive invalid files. Don't  use  -f
              if you can't live with these problems.

       -r     Ignore  reply  messages,  i.e. all messages whose subject starts
              with Re:

       -t     Use plaintext messages. Usually, UUDeview only presents  encoded
              data  for  decoding.  Plaintext  messages are only shown if they
              have an associated file name. With this option set, unnamed text
              parts  from  MIME messages and non-encoded messages are also of-
              fered. Unnamed messages are assigned a unique name in  the  form
              of a sequential four-digit number.

       -d     Sets  the program into desperate mode. It will then offer you to
              decode incomplete files. This is useful if you are  missing  the
              last  part  of a 50-parts posting, but in most cases the desper-
              ately-decoded files will simply be corrupt and unusable. The de-
              gree  of  usefulness  of  an incomplete file depends on the file
              type.

       -b     This changes UUDeview's "bracket policy."  UUDeview looks  at  a
              message's  subject  line,  and  reads numbers in brackets as the
              part number, as in (3/7), which is read as the third message  in
              a  series  of  seven.  By default, numbers in parentheses () are
              preferred over numbers in brackets []. You can change this using
              either -b or, for clarity -b[].

       -s     Read  "minus  smartness".  This  option turns off automatic part
              number detection from the subject line. Try this option if UUDe-
              view  fails to parse the subject line correctly and makes errors
              at guessing part numbers, resulting in incorrect ordering of the
              parts.  With  this option, parts are always put together sequen-
              tially (so the parts must be  correctly  ordered  in  the  input
              file).  Also,  with  this option, the program cannot detect that
              parts are missing.  Note:  The  correct  part  number  found  in
              proper  MIME  files is still evaluated.  If this option is given
              twice, the subject itself is ignored, too, and won't be used  to
              group  parts.  Use if the messages that the parts come delivered
              in have different subject lines.

   OTHER OPTIONS
       -q     (Quiet) Disables verbosity. Normally, the  program  prints  some
              status messages while reading the input files, which can be very
              helpful if something should go wrong. Use if these messages dis-
              turb you.  Disables progress bars. See -n option.

       -v     (disables  Verbosity)  Disables verbose messages, i.e. notes are
              not displayed, but does not remove warnings and errors.  Is  not
              as quiet as the -q (Quiet) option.

       -n     No  progress bars. Normally, UUDeview prints ASCII bars crawling
              up to 100 percent, but does not check if your terminal is  capa-
              ble  of displaying them. Use this switch if your terminal isn't,
              or if you find the bars annoying.

       +e exts
              Selects only the files with the given extensions  for  decoding,
              others  will  be  ignored.  +e .gif.jpg would decode all gif and
              jpeg files, but not tif or other files. The list  of  extensions
              works case-insensitive.

       -e exts
              The reverse of the above.

       You  will  experience  unwanted results if you try to mix +e and -e op-
       tions on the command line.

   INPUT OPTIONS
       file(s)
              The files to be scanned for encoded files. You can also  give  a
              single  hyphen  '-'  to  read from standard input. Any number of
              files may be given, but there is usually a limitation of 128 op-
              tions  imposed  by  the  shell. If you are composing the list of
              files with wildcards, make sure you don't accidentally feed  the
              program  with binary files. This will result in undefined behav-
              iour.

       @file  Makes UUDeview read further options from the file. Each line  of
              the  file must hold exactly one option. The file is erased after
              the program finishes. This feature may be used to specify an un-
              limited  number of files to be scanned. Combined with the powers
              of find(1), entire directory trees (like the news  spool  direc-
              tory) can be processed.

       Options may also be set in the $UUDEVIEW environment variable, which is
       read before processing the options on the command line.

DECODING
       After all input files have been scanned, you are asked  for  each  file
       what  do  do  with it. Of course, the usual answer is to decode it, but
       there are other possibilities. You can use the following commands (each
       command is a single letter):

       d      (D)ecode  the  file and write the decoded file to disk, with the
              given name.

       y      (Y)es does the same as (d).

       x      E(x)tract also decodes the file.

       a      Decodes all remaining files without prompting.

       n      Skips this file without decoding it.

       b      Steps back to the previous file.

       r      Rename. You can choose a different name for the file in order to
              save it under this new name.

       p      Set  the path where decoded files shall be written to. This path
              can also be set with the -p command line option.

       i      Displays info about the file, if present. If a multipart posting
              had  a  zeroeth part, it is printed, otherwise the first part up
              to the encoded data is printed.

       e      Execute a command. You can enter any arbitrary command, possibly
              using  the  current file as an argument. All dollar signs '$' in
              this command line are replaced with the filename of the  current
              file  (speaking  correctly,  the  name of a temporary file). You
              should not background processes using this  temporary  file,  as
              programs  might get confused if their input file suddenly disap-
              pears.

       l      List a file. Use this command only if you know that the file  in
              question is a textfile, otherwise, you'll get a load of junk.

       q      Quits the program immediately.

       ?      Prints a short description of all these commands.

       If  you  don't enter a command and simply hit return at the prompt, the
       default command, decoding the file, is used.

RUNTIME MESSGAGES
       In verbose mode (that is, if you didn't disable verbosity with  the  -v
       option),  progress messages will appear.  They are extremely helpful in
       tracing what the program does, and can be used to figure out the reason
       why  files  cannot be decoded, if you understand them. This section ex-
       plains how to interpret them.  Understanding this section is not essen-
       tial to operate the program.

       First,  there  are  "Loading"  messages,  which  begin  with the string
       "Loaded". Each line should feature the following items:

       Source File
              The first item is the source file from which a part was  loaded.
              Many parts can be detected within a single file.

       Subject Line
              The complete subject is reproduced in single quotes.

       Identifier
              The program derives a unique identification for this thread from
              the subject line, for grouping articles that look like they  be-
              long to the same file. The result of this algorithm is presented
              in braces.

       Filename
              If a filename was detected on the subject  line  or  within  the
              data  (for  example, on a begin line, or as part of the Content-
              Type information).

       Part Number
              The part number derived from the subject line, or, in  the  case
              of  properly  MIME-formatted  messages, from the "part" informa-
              tion.

       Begin/End
              If a "begin" or "end" token was detected, it is printed here.

       Encoding Type
              If encoded data was detected within this part, either  "UUdata",
              "Base64", "XXdata" or "Binhex" is printed here.

       More  messages  are printed after scanning has completed. A single line
       will be printed for each group of articles. The contents of  this  line
       are best understood by looking at an example. Here is one:

       Found 'mailfile.gz' State 16 UUData Parts begin 1 2 3 4 5 end 6 OK

       This  indicates  that the file mailfile.gz has been found. The file was
       uuencoded ("UUData") and consists of 6 parts.  The  "begin"  token  was
       found  in  the  first  part, and the "end" token was found in the sixth
       part. Because it looks like everything's there, this file is tagged  as
       being  "OK". The State is a set of bits, where the following values may
       be or'ed:

       1      Missing Part

       2      No Begin

       4      No End

       8      No encoded data found.

       16     File looks Ok

       32     An error occurred during decoding of the file.

       64     File was successfully decoded.

NOTES
       Because the program cannot receive terminal input when a file is  being
       read  from  standard  input, interactivity is automatically disabled in
       this case.

       UUDeview is aware of MIME messages, but normally  ignores  strict  MIME
       compliance  in  favor  of  finding unproperly encoded data within them,
       e.g. to succeed when individual parts of a  uuencoded  file  have  been
       sent  with  a  MIME  mailer as MIME messages. For that, it subjects all
       "text/plain" parts of a message to encoding detection. You can use  the
       -z option (see above) for more strict RFC2045 compliance.

       The  scanner  tends  to ignore short Base64 data (less than four lines)
       outside of MIME messages. Some checks for this condition  are  used  in
       desperate  mode,  but  they may cause misdetection of encoded data, re-
       sulting in some invalid files.

       Files are always decoded into a temporary file first, then this file is
       copied to the final location. This is to prevent accidentally overwrit-
       ing existing files with data that turns out too late  to  be  undecode-
       able.  Thus  be  careful  to  have twice the necessary space available.
       Also, when reading from standard input, all the data  is  dumped  to  a
       temporary file before starting the usual scanning process on that file.

       uudeview  tries  to  derive all necessary information from the Subject:
       line if present.  If it holds garbage, or if the program fails to  find
       a unique identification and the part number there, uudeview might still
       be able to decode the file using other heuristics, but you'll need  ma-
       jor luck then.
       Yet  this is only a concern with split-files. If all encoded files only
       consist of single parts, don't worry.

       If you rename, copy or link the program to uudecode, it may  act  as  a
       smart replacement for the standard, accepting the same command-line op-
       tions. This has not been well-tested yet.

SEE ALSO
       uuenview(1), uudecode(1), uuencode(1).
       The UUDeview homepage on the Web,
       http://www.fpx.de/fp/Software/UUDeview/

BUGS
       To read a file whose name starts with a  hyphen  '-',  prepend  a  path
       name, for example './'.

       The checksums found in BinHex data are ignored.

       The  program cannot fully handle partial multipart messages (MIME-style
       multipart messages split over several mail  messages).  The  individual
       parts  are recognized and concatenated, and the embedded multipart mes-
       sage is "decoded" into a plain-text file, which must then be fed  again
       to uudeview.  Don't worry, these kinds of messages are rare.

       UUDeview cannot decipher RFC 1522 headers.

                                   June 2001                       UUDEVIEW(1)

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