Currently, uuencode might be considered superior to base64. Even
though uuencoded data is more likely to get corrupted, the decoder
can at least detect transmission errors.
Folks interested in encodings of this ilk might want to look at the
bencode/bdecode package we ship with C News. It's basically uuencode
done right, and is designed to give bit-for-bit-reliable transmission
of binary data via most any mail path -- in particular, it gets data
through Bitnet mailers reliably, which is no small feat. Its format
includes both a byte count and a CRC. (Credit Where Credit Due Dept:
the folks at U of Waterloo gave us this package.)
Henry Spencer at U of Toronto Zoology
henry(_at_)zoo(_dot_)toronto(_dot_)edu utzoo!henry