.Dd September 1, 1996
.Dt BTOA 1
.Os NetBSD 1.2BETA
.Sh NAME
.Nm btoa ,
.Nm atob
.Nd conversion between text and binary
.Sh SYNOPSIS
.Nm btoa
\ \*(Lt\ \&
.Ar input
\ \*(Gt\ \&
.Ar output
.br
.Nm atob
.Op Fl f
\ \*(Lt\ \&
.Ar input
\ \*(Gt\ \&
.Ar output
.Sh DESCRIPTION
.Nm btoa
and
.Nm atob
convert between binary data and a textual representation thereof.  They
are philosophically related to
.Xr uuencode 1
and
.Xr uudecode 1 ,
but differ in two important respects: first, the encoding is different
and somewhat more compact, and second, they always work as filters,
encoding or decoding stdin to stdout
.Pf ( Xr uudecode 1
insists on writing its decoded output to a file).
.Pp
.Nm btoa ,
which converts binary to printable, takes no arguments.
.Nm atob ,
which converts printable to binary, normally takes no arguments;
however, it can be given
.Fl f ,
which changes its behavior in two ways: first, the trailing line, with
its byte count and checksums, is ignored; second, the decoded output is
not buffered in a temporary file, but rather is written directly to
stdout.  The former is useful if the trailing line gets mangled in
transmission; the latter is useful if the encoded data are larger than
the available disk space in
.Pa /tmp .
.Sh SEE ALSO
.Xr btoa 5
.Xr uuencode 1
.Xr uudecode 1
.Sh AUTHOR
Paul Rutter,
.Aq philabs!per ,
and Joe Orost,
.Aq petsd!joe ,
cleaned up to (a) remove ASCII dependency, (b) remove dependency on
running on a 32-bit machine, and (c) prototype the code and do other
related cleanup, by der Mouse,
.Aq mouse@rodents.montreal.qc.ca .