qprint(1)qprint(1)NAMEqprint - encode / decode file as RFC 1521 MIME Quoted-Printable
SYNOPSISqprint -d|-e [ options ] [ infile [ outfile ] ]
DESCRIPTION
The MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) specification RFC 1521
and successors) defines a mechanism for encoding text consisting pri‐
marily of printable ASCII characters, but which may contain characters
(for example, accented letters in the ISO 8859 Latin-1 character set)
which cannot be encoded as 7-bit ASCII or are non-printable characters
which may confuse mail transfer agents.
qprint is a command line utility which encodes and decodes files in
this format. It can be used within a pipeline as an encoding or decod‐
ing filter, and is most commonly used in this manner as part of an
automated mail processing system. With appropriate options, qprint can
encode pure binary files, but it's a poor choice since it may inflate
the size of the file by as much as a factor of three. The Base64 MIME
encoding is a better choice for such data.
OPTIONS-b, --binary
Treat the input (when encoding) or output (when decoding)
file as pure binary, and process end of line sequences as
binary data. Encoding and decoding a file with this option
preserves the exact sequence of bytes in the input, but
does not perform the translation of end of line sequences
normally performed by Quoted-Printable encoding.
--copyright Print program copyright information.
-d, --decode
Decodes the input, previously created by qprint, to recover
the original input file.
-e, --encode
Encodes the input into an output text file containing its
qprint encoding.
-i, --ebcdic
Encode ASCII characters for which no equivalent exists in
the EBCDIC character set. This renders files more portable
when transported to EBCDIC systems.
-n, --noerrcheck
Suppress error checking when decoding. By default, upon
encountering a non white space character which does not
belong to the qprint set, or discovering the input file is
incorrectly padded to a multiple of four characters, qprint
issues an error message and terminates processing with exit
status 1. The -n option suppresses even this rudimentary
error checking; invalid characters are silently ignored and
the output truncated to the last three valid octets if the
input is incorrectly padded.
-p ,--paranoid
Every character in the input file will be encoded as an
escape sequence. You must also specify the -b or --binary
option if you wish end of line sequences to be escaped as
well. This option is a last resort when there's no other
way to transmit the file, but an encoding explicitly
designed for binary data such as Base64 is a much more eco‐
nomical choice.
-u, --help Print how-to-call information.
--version Print program version information.
EXIT STATUSqprint returns status 0 if processing was completed without errors, 1
if an I/O error occurred or errors were detected in decoding a file
which indicate it is incorrect or incomplete, and 2 if processing could
not be performed at all due, for example, to a nonexistent input file.
FILES
If no infile is specified or infile is a single ``-'', qprint reads
from standard input; if no outfile is given, or outfile is a single
``-'', output is sent to standard output. The input and output are
processed strictly serially; consequently qprint may be used in pipe‐
lines. The program can process files of any size supported by the sys‐
tem containing text lines of arbitrary length.
BUGS
Encoding a file with a large percentage of non-ASCII characters may
dramatically increase its size. This is inherent in the design of
Quoted-Printable encoding.
Please report bugs and documentation errors to bugs@fourmilab.ch.
SEE ALSObase64(1), uuencode(1), RFC1521
AUTHOR
John Walker
http://www.fourmilab.ch/
This software is in the public domain. Permission to use, copy, mod‐
ify, and distribute this software and its documentation for any purpose
and without fee is hereby granted, without any conditions or restric‐
tions. This software is provided ``as is'' without express or implied
warranty.
This is version 1.1 of qprint. The current version of this program may
be downloaded from http://www.fourmilab.ch/webtools/qprint.
4th Berkeley Distribution 16 DEC 2014 qprint(1)
