ARCHIVED: In Unix, how do I use the MacUtils to encode or decode a document in MacBinary or BinHex?
Using the MacUtils, a suite of freeware utilities, allows you to create and decode MacBinary and BinHex files from the Unix command line prompt.
To decode a BinHexed file, enter at the Unix prompt:
hexbin [options] file.hqx
Replace file.hqx
with the file you wish to decode and
[options]
with one or more of the following options:
-3 |
Decode the BinHex file. Put the data fork
in a file with the extension .data , the resource
fork in a file with the extension .rsrc , and
Finder information in a file with the extension
.info . With the exception of the file extension, the
names of all three files will be identical
(e.g., file.data , file.rsrc , and
file.info ).
|
-f |
Identical in behavior to
-3 ,
except that it will not create empty fork files. So, if a file
doesn't have a resource fork, hexbin will not create a
.rsrc file.
|
-r |
With this option selected,
hexbin will only decode resource forks. Thus, if a file
has a data fork, the program will ignore it.
|
-d |
With this option selected,
hexbin will only decode data forks. Thus, if a file has
a resource fork, the program will ignore it.
|
-u or -U |
With this option selected,
hexbin will decode only the data fork of a file and will
exchange all carriage return characters with line feeds. This option
should only be used with text files. Using the -u
option creates a file with the extension .text while
using the -U option creates a file with no extension.
|
-b |
This option tells hexbin to
convert the file into MacBinary format, saving it into a file with the
.bin extension. This is the default, so if you don't
specify any options, this is the action hexbin performs.
|
-s |
Identical to -b , except that
instead of saving the MacBinary output to a file, it sends it to
standard output. This option is best used in conjunction with a pipe.
|
-l or -v |
Lists files that are
being extracted. The two options are similar, except that
-v gives more information.
|
-i |
Works the same as
-l , except no extraction is actually
performed.
|
-n [name] |
Replace [name] with the
name you wish to give the decoded file.
|
To decode a MacBinary file, enter at the Unix prompt:
macunpack [options] file.bin
Replace file.bin
with the file you wish to decode. The
options for macunpack
are identical to those for
hexbin
.
To create a BinHex file, enter at the Unix prompt:
binhex [options] file > file.hqx
Replace file
and file.hqx
with,
respectively, the file you wish to encode and the name you wish to
give the resulting BinHexed file. This command has the following
options:
-r |
With this option selected,
binhex encodes file as a resource fork.
|
-d |
With this option selected,
binhex encodes file as a data fork.
|
-u or -U |
This option is similar to
-d except it should only be used to encode
text files. It exchanges line feeds for carriage returns.
|
-c [creator] |
Replace [creator]
with the file creator code you wish to assign to the document. If you
do not specify a file creator, the resulting BinHexed file's creator
will be MACA with the -d and
-u
options and RSED with the -r option.
|
-t [type] |
Replace [type] with the
file type code you wish to assign to the document. If you do not
specify a file type, the resulting BinHexed file's type will be
TEXT with the -d and
-u options and RSRC with the
-r option.
|
-l |
Writes information about the file being
encoded
|
-i |
Works like -l ,
except no actual encoding is performed
|
If you wish to encode the forks of a previously decoded file back into
a BinHexed Mac OS file, replace file
in the
example above with the Finder information file (the file with the
.info
extension). You do not use the
-r
, -d
, or
-u
options when you do this.
Creating a MacBinary file is a very similar process. The only
difference is that you pipe the output of the binhex
command into hexbin
rather than redirecting it to a file.
So, at the Unix prompt, enter:
binhex [options] file | hexbin
This will create a MacBinary file with the same name as
file
except it will have a .bin
extension.
At Indiana University, for personal or departmental Linux or Unix systems support, see Get help for Linux or Unix at IU.
This is document aewr in the Knowledge Base.
Last modified on 2018-01-18 12:20:51.