A common method for transmitting non-text files via Internet email, which was originally designed for ASCII text. The UUencode utility encodes the files by converting 8-bit characters into 7-bit ASCII text, and the UUdecode utility decodes it back to its original format at the receiving end. Originating in the Unix community, UUcoding was one of the first methods for sending binary files as attached files over Internet email. Today, MIME is widely used. See
BinHex,
MIME and
Wincode.