Trf: Conversion commands
Author: Andreas Kupries,,,

# Trf commands: conversion

[ Commands | Sitemap ]

All data conversion commands support only one option, `-mode`. Allowed values are ``encode'', ``decode'' and all unique abbreviations.

For immediate usage it specifies the operation to use.

For attached transformations it specifies the operation to use for writing. Reading will automatically use the reverse operation.

Encode converts from binary data into the described representation, decode does the reverse (obviously ).

Standard conversions are

bin | Converts bytes into dual representation.
oct | Converts bytes into octal representation.
hex | Converts bytes into hexadecimal representation.

None of them buffers characters internally.

uuencode | Blocks of 3 characters are uuencoded/decoded. Will buffer 2 characters internally until a block is complete.
base64 | Blocks of 3 characters are base64-encoded/decoded. This is equivalent to PGP's ASCII armor. Used by MIME too. Will buffer 2 characters internally until a block is complete. See `RFC 2045` for its definition.
ascii85 | Blocks of 4 characters will be encoded into Ascii85 representation as defined in the 'Postscript Reference Manual' (2nd Edition, section 3.13, page 129).
otp_words | Blocks of 64-bits are encoded as six English words, as defined in `RFC 2289`. See also otp_md5.
quoted-printable | Printable ASCII characters are largely untouched. Otherwise a three-character encoding sequence is used. This is MIME's compromise encoding. See `RFC 2045` for its definition.

With the exception of otp_words all of these are able to convert an incomplete block at the end of input.

Last update at Mon Aug 20 22:52:27 PDT 2001