[Go to CFHT Home Page] Man Pages
Back to Software Index  BORDER=0Manpage Top Level
    uudecode(1) manual page Table of Contents

Name

uudecode - decode an encoded file

Synopsis

uudecode [-flag [value]]... [--opt-name[[=| ]value]]... [<file>...]

If no file(s) are provided, then standard input is decoded.

Description

uudecode transforms uuencoded files into their original form. The encoded file(s) may be specified on the command line, or one may be read from standard input. The output file name is specified in the encoded file, but may be overridden with the -o option. It will have the mode of the original file, except that setuid and execute bits are not retained. If the output file is specified to be /dev/stdout or -, the result will be written to standard output. If there are multiple input files and the second or subsquent file specifies standard output, the decoded data will be written to the same file as the previous output. Don’t do that. uudecode ignores any leading and trailing lines. It looks for a line that starts with "begin" and proceeds until the end-of-encoding marker is found. The program determines from the header line of the encoded file which of the two supported encoding schemes was used and whether or not the output file name has been encoded with base64 encoding. See uuencode(5) .

Options

-o file, --output-file=file
direct output to file.

If specifed, decoded data are written to this file. When multiple inputs are specified on the command line, this option cannot be specified. All decoded data must be written to the file name encoded in the data.

-c, --ignore-chmod
ignore fchmod(3P) errors.

By default, if the output file permissions cannot be changed to the permissions specified in the encoded data, the file will not be written out and execution stops. This option will cause that error to be ignored. The resulting file will have all the data, but the incorrect mode settings.

fchmod() errors are also ignored if POSIXLY_CORRECT is set in the environment. RE: http://austingroupbugs.net/view.php?id=635

A warning is always emitted when fchmod() fails.

-h, --help
Display usage information and exit.
-!, --more-help
Pass the extended usage information through a pager.
-R [rcfile], --save-opts[=rcfile]
Save the option state to rcfile. The default is the last configuration file listed in the OPTION PRESETS section, below. The command will exit after updating the config file.
-r rcfile, --load-opts=rcfile, --no-load-opts
Load options from rcfile. The no-load-opts form will disable the loading of earlier RC/INI files. --no-load-opts is handled early, out of order.
-v [{v|c|n}], --version[={v|c|n}]
Output version of program and exit. The default mode is ‘v’, a simple version. The ‘c’ mode will print copyright information and ‘n’ will print the full copyright notice.

Option Presets

Any option that is not marked as not presettable may be preset by loading values from configuration ("RC" or ".INI") file(s). The file "$HOME/.sharrc" will be used, if present.

Standards

This implementation is compliant with P1003.2b/D11.

Files

See OPTION PRESETS for configuration files.

Exit Status

One of the following exit values will be returned:
0 (EXIT_SUCCESS)
Successful program execution.
1 (EXIT_OPTION_ERROR)
The command options were misconfigured.
2 (EXIT_INVALID)
(warning) One or more input files contained no valid data
4 (EXIT_NO_INPUT)
(warning) The specified input file was not found
8 (EXIT_NO_OUTPUT)
The specified output file could not be created (error); or else one of the output files could not be written or its access mode could not be changed (warnings). The accompanying message(s) will distinguish.
9 (EXIT_NO_MEM)
No process memory available
66 (EX_NOINPUT)
A specified configuration file could not be loaded.
70 (EX_SOFTWARE)
libopts had an internal operational error. Please report it to autogen-users@lists.sourceforge.net. Thank you.

The exit status codes are (mostly) warning codes. As such, each code is "or"-ed into the final exit code as the input files are processed. For example, an exit code of ’6’ is not listed above. It is the sum of EXIT_INVALID and EXIT_NO_INPUT. It would mean that at least one input file contained invalid data and also at least one input file could not be found at all.

See Also

uuencode(1) , uuencode(5)

Authors

Free Software Foundation, Inc.

Copyright

Copyright (C) 1994-2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc. all rights reserved. This program is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 3 or later.

Bugs

Please put sharutils in the subject line for emailed bug reports. It helps to spot the message.

If more than one name in the encoded files are the same, or if the second or following input files specifies standard output for the output file, then the result is probably not what is expected. Specifically, standard output will be appended to and named output files will be replaced.

Please send bug reports to: bug-gnu-utils@gnu.org

Notes

This manual page was AutoGen-erated from the uudecode option definitions.

Table of Contents