The uu module

The UU encoding scheme is used to convert arbitrary binary data to plain text. This format is quite popular on the Usenet, but is slowly being superseded by base64 encoding.

A UU encoder takes groups of three bytes (24 bits), and converts each group to a sequence of four printable characters (6 bits per character), using characters from chr(32) (space) to chr(95). Including the length marker and line feed characters, UU encoding typically expands data by 40%.

An encoded data stream starts with a begin line, which also includes the file privileges (the Unix mode field, as an octal number) and the filename (or a hyphen, if the name is not known), and ends with an end line:

begin 666 sample.jpg
M_]C_X  02D9)1@ ! 0   0 !  #_VP!#  @&!@<&!0@'!P<)'0@*#!0-# L+
...more lines like this...
end

The uu module provides two functions, encode and decode:

encode(infile, outfile, filename) encodes data from the input file and writes it to the output file. The input and output file arguments can be either filenames or file objects. The third argument is used as filename in the begin field.

Example: Using the uu module to encode a binary file

# File: uu-example-1.py

import uu
import os, sys

infile = "samples/sample.jpg"

uu.encode(infile, sys.stdout, os.path.basename(infile))

begin 666 sample.jpg
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
decode(infile, outfile) decodes uu-encoded data from the input text file, and writes it to the output file. Again, both arguments can be either filenames or file objects.

Example: Using the uu module to decode a uu-encoded file

# File: uu-example-2.py

import uu
import StringIO

infile = "samples/sample.uue"
outfile = "samples/sample.jpg"

#
# decode

fi = open(infile)
fo = StringIO.StringIO()

uu.decode(fi, fo)

#
# compare with original data file

data = open(outfile, "rb").read()

if fo.getvalue() == data:
    print len(data), "bytes ok"

The encode and decode functions work with arbitrary file objects. You can use the StringIO module to encode and decode texts that you have in memory:

Example: Using the uu module to encode and decode text strings

# File: uu-example-3.py

import uu
import StringIO

def uu_encodestring(text):
    fin = StringIO.StringIO(text)
    fout = StringIO.StringIO()
    uu.encode(fin, fout)
    return fout.getvalue()

def uu_decodestring(text):
    fin = StringIO.StringIO(text)
    fout = StringIO.StringIO()
    uu.decode(fin, fout)
    return fout.getvalue()

text = "hello" * 1000

data = uu_encodestring(text)
text = uu_decodestring(data)