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PROLOG | NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | OPERANDS | STDIN | INPUT FILES | ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES | ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS | STDOUT | STDERR | OUTPUT FILES | EXTENDED DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS | APPLICATION USAGE | EXAMPLES | RATIONALE | FUTURE DIRECTIONS | SEE ALSO | COPYRIGHT |
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UUDECODE(1P) POSIX Programmer's Manual UUDECODE(1P)
This manual page is part of the POSIX Programmer's Manual. The
Linux implementation of this interface may differ (consult the
corresponding Linux manual page for details of Linux behavior), or
the interface may not be implemented on Linux.
uudecode — decode a binary file
uudecode [-o outfile] [file]
The uudecode utility shall read a file, or standard input if no
file is specified, that includes data created by the uuencode
utility. The uudecode utility shall scan the input file, searching
for data compatible with one of the formats specified in uuencode,
and attempt to create or overwrite the file described by the data
(or overridden by the -o option). The pathname shall be contained
in the data or specified by the -o option. The file access
permission bits and contents for the file to be produced shall be
contained in that data. The mode bits of the created file (other
than standard output) shall be set from the file access permission
bits contained in the data; that is, other attributes of the mode,
including the file mode creation mask (see umask), shall not
affect the file being produced. If either of the op characters '+'
and '-' (see chmod) are specified in symbolic mode, the initial
mode on which those operations are based is unspecified.
If the pathname of the file resolves to an existing file and the
user does not have write permission on that file, uudecode shall
terminate with an error. If the pathname of the file resolves to
an existing file and the user has write permission on that file,
the existing file shall be overwritten and, if possible, the mode
bits of the file (other than standard output) shall be set as
described above; if the mode bits cannot be set, uudecode shall
not treat this as an error.
If the input data was produced by uuencode on a system with a
different number of bits per byte than on the target system, the
results of uudecode are unspecified.
The uudecode utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume
of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines.
The following option shall be supported by the implementation:
-o outfile
A pathname of a file that shall be used instead of any
pathname contained in the input data. Specifying an
outfile option-argument of /dev/stdout shall indicate
standard output.
The following operand shall be supported:
file The pathname of a file containing the output of
uuencode.
See the INPUT FILES section.
The input files shall be files containing the output of uuencode.
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of
uudecode:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization
variables that are unset or null. (See the Base
Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Section 8.2,
Internationalization Variables for the precedence of
internationalization variables used to determine the
values of locale categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values
of all the other internationalization variables.
LC_CTYPE Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences
of bytes of text data as characters (for example,
single-byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in
arguments and input files).
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the
format and contents of diagnostic messages written to
standard error.
NLSPATH Determine the location of message catalogs for the
processing of LC_MESSAGES.
Default.
If the file data header encoded by uuencode is - or /dev/stdout,
or the -o /dev/stdout option overrides the file data, the standard
output shall be in the same format as the file originally encoded
by uuencode. Otherwise, the standard output shall not be used.
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic messages.
The output file shall be in the same format as the file originally
encoded by uuencode.
None.
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 Successful completion.
>0 An error occurred.
Default.
The following sections are informative.
The user who is invoking uudecode must have write permission on
any file being created.
The output of uuencode is essentially an encoded bit stream that
is not cognizant of byte boundaries. It is possible that a 9-bit
byte target machine can process input from an 8-bit source, if it
is aware of the requirement, but the reverse is unlikely to be
satisfying. Of course, the only data that is meaningful for such a
transfer between architectures is generally character data.
None.
Input files are not necessarily text files, as stated by an early
proposal. Although the uuencode output is a text file, that output
could have been wrapped within another file or mail message that
is not a text file.
The -o option is not historical practice, but was added at the
request of WG15 so that the user could override the target
pathname without having to edit the input data itself.
In early drafts, the [-o outfile] option-argument allowed the use
of - to mean standard output. The symbol - has only been used
previously in POSIX.1‐2008 as a standard input indicator. The
standard developers did not wish to overload the meaning of - in
this manner. The /dev/stdout concept exists on most modern
systems. The /dev/stdout syntax does not refer to a new special
file. It is just a magic cookie to specify standard output.
None.
chmod(1p), umask(1p), uuencode(1p)
The Base Definitions volume of POSIX.1‐2017, Chapter 8,
Environment Variables, Section 12.2, Utility Syntax Guidelines
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic
form from IEEE Std 1003.1-2017, Standard for Information
Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The
Open Group Base Specifications Issue 7, 2018 Edition, Copyright
(C) 2018 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,
Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between
this version and the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard,
the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee
document. The original Standard can be obtained online at
http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .
Any typographical or formatting errors that appear in this page
are most likely to have been introduced during the conversion of
the source files to man page format. To report such errors, see
https://www.kernel.org/doc/man-pages/reporting_bugs.html .
IEEE/The Open Group 2017 UUDECODE(1P)
Pages that refer to this page: uuencode(1p)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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