Particularily, received a file which, after uudecoding, hasa 
suffix of   .arj  .  The contents of the file are unintelligible
in English and I wondered if someone recognized the   .arj  suffix
so I could decide what to do with the file.
 
The file is destined for an MS-DOS machine. Here is a little clip
developed from    cat -A   .

>[top lines]
>
>`M-j(^@^^^D^A^@^P^@^B%%M-$:^\^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@YURI.ARJ^
@^@5^T
>^VM-:^@^@`M-j(^@^^^D^A^@^P^A^@%ll:^\O^\^@^@^^9^@^@M-nM-^IM-UM-`^@^@
>^@^@^@YURI.D
>OC^@^@M-WM-^VM-wM-^G^@^@^T2M-^DM->M-;M-]#iM->M-;jIM-4M-^A^Q?M-D^F1M-^V^TM-
^_FHFM
>
>[stuff deleted]
>
>-gM-LM-BM-3g.M-.M-ZM-I>M-u)M-OhM-W8M-OM-=JYmYM-]VM-^^M-I9WsM-fM-YM-^HM-slM
-gM-TM
>-5{ M-^?#M-/M-@`M-oM-^PsM-d$
>M-Q^UM-N`M-sM-U$
>M-]M-^JM-n^Ewv^GM-~0M-/M-m$
>M-~M-XM-/M-IM-0AM-^?M-V+M-`$
>
>[stuff deleted]
>
>[last lines]
>
>>M-4M-yCM-^D%M-^EM-/M-(M-^]M->M-sM-GM-^]M-lM-w~lM-iM-8^BM-:M-^FM->^HM-kM-{
M-^@ZM
>-^_?\M-3$
>%M-4M-MM-mM-7M-\M-^JJ^IM-@`M-j^@^@
>
>[EOF]
  
Some of the line-lengths run was past 80 chars, some are shorter.
>
I notice that in the first lines, there is the plaintext  YURI.DOC, 
which is also a filename that resulted from another uudecoede file
sent separately.
 
My initial suspicion is that the    .arj  file  relates to the .DOC
and  +may+ ,just MAY be font information in a different chracter
set - this is an international exchange.
  
If that is true, .......... now what?
 

27 responses total.

Arj is a file compression program.  .arj files seem quite common on pirate
boards, although much less common on the FTP sites I've used.  I have a copy
of it if you want me to upload it for you.

This item could expand to all types of suffixes adn what they maen
and what to do with them and where to do it over and above the
instant   .arj   suffix.
  

And there isn't an arj compressor for the Apple II, TS :(  Is there
one for Unix?  (I haven't noticed there was a Unix arj, but it
might be I never thought it useful).  If there was such a Unix
beast, you could use it to translate that .arj to a .zip or a .arc
that would stand a much better chance of being uncompressed on
another platform.

What a coincidence. I was downloading resedit from ftp.apple.com, and
noticed a file called applesingle-appledouble-hqx, and since I had
just run into an applesingle file uuencoded (never did recover it
completely) I thought I'd learn more about applesingle. So I 
downloaded it too, decoded it, land got applesingle-appledouble.img
.img? Another cryptic suffix. Here is a piece of it opened in WORD
"All Files":

Now that's a small piece ..............

.img sounds like some sort of binary image file.  Don't Macs make two
kinds of copies (such as drag and drop type copies vs. image copies,
the latter is a true and exact copy and the former is not)?

If anyone wants it, I can upload an older version of the ARJ
archiver.  It won't work on Grex, of course, but you can
download it and use it on your DOS machine.

Re #4. That "really small piece" wasn't even part of it. When I did
copy and paste into pico, everything went blooey, and I had to 
disconnect. I presume the .img file had binary sequences that told
pico/grex to do something impossible. I have not yet found a way to
open/convert the .img file, to see what it is.

Received the arj file, but haven't gotten the HD problems
fixed yet around here (plus another move) and the associated
grief - will try it rsn and let you know

I was just sent an e-mail message that had, as "PS-s", two uuencoded
apple-single files. I exported the message to a file, and now I have
 two questions:
 1. How do I split out the two uuencoded items into separate files?
 2. How do I decode them (and what kind of file will I get)?

They're plain text files.  Just use vi or any editor to write them to
separate files - from "begin" line to "end" line.  If you want different
names or permissions for the uudecoded results (than what the sender
intended), edit the "begin" lines.  Need I say that the files you write
to should not have the *same* names as the uudecoded files?

Then just say    uudecode foo   where foo is the name of the file you
wrote out.

Sigh. All I know is pico....now I regret not taking davel's advice from
long ago to learn vi. 

This response has been erased.

You should be able to do it with pico, too, shouldn't you?  Can't search
for text, and write selected lines to file?  If it can't write selected
lines to file, you can always copy the file & delete the sections you don't
need - or is pico unable to do even *that*?  (I really don't know pico,
having only run it a couple of times to check on problems people were
having.)

This response has been erased.

This response has been erased.

Nonetheless, I'd recommend to anyone who needs to do anything more
sophisticated with files in a Unix environment than composing email
messages and conference responses -- learn vi.  The "modal"
interface is unusual, but it's quite regular and consistent, and
once you've got the hang of it, you have a lot of power at your
fingertips.

Also, vi skills are portable, as vi exists in just about any Unix
environment.  The same cannot be said for editors like joe.

This was my own original reason for learning vi.  I now love it, but the
period before my fingers learned to do what I wanted without my having
to think how was quite painful.  But vi is available on the system if it's
Unix, & there are even a couple of clones for PCs (with limitations,
however).

The clones are getting better, and I know of at least one -- nvi --
that some people are saying is preferable to "real" vi even in a
Unix environment.  I've used nvi a little bit, not for real heavy
duty stuff, and although it seems to work well, its screen updating
was slow under certain conditions, compared to vi.  Nvi is currently
undergoing extensive development, so this may improve.

This response has been erased.

Nvi also does multiple windows.  I'm told by someone who's seen
the source code that nvi has stubs in it for X Window support,
so that someday you may be able to position the cursor with a
mouse, cut & paste by dragging and clicking, use the mouse to
resize windows at runtime, and all that good stuff (under X
of course).  But if that's one's cup of tea, there's already
GNU Emacs, which already has all that stuff.

And beside, emacs has lots of stuff that vi doesn't, and only has on or two
small drawbacks (and for that, get a faster unix box:)

Indeed.  Emacs would be my default editor on Grex if the system
could handle it decently.

Emacs IS my default editor on Grex, and it works reasonably well, considering
how rarely I edit a fil in full screen mode.  If I needed fullscreen editing
on grex more often (or recieved mail on grex, for that matter), I'd set up
my EDITOR the same way I have it on dorsai, with EDITOR set to emacsclient,
and emacs only run once.  Requires using job control, multiple logins, or
screen, but still pretty fast.

Interesting.  Didn't know about emacsclient.  It seems to require an
invocation of emacs functioning as a server, and a socket through which
to communicate.  Could you give a quick explanation of how to set that
up?

        Setting up emacscient is far easier than I thought before I
bothered to rtfm.  Simply put the command (server-start) (this can
also be done interactively as M-x server-start) in your .emacs file,
and set your EDITOR to emacsclient.  Run Emacs and background it, or
keep it fg and log in again, or run screen first and keep emacs fg'd,
but have it loaded when you do other stuff (I often forget and after
getting a "cannot start server" message, start emacs for the first
time.  But on dorsai, where I get my mail. I use VM under emacs to
read it, so that is usually not an issue).  Now, whenever you want to
edit a file, procede normally until you get the message "waiting for
emacs" and use whatever method is appropriate to get to emacs, and the
file will have popped up and be waiting for you.  When you are
finished, just use C-x # to save and close the server connection (and
background the popped up buffer), and go back to what you were doing.
Reasonably fast, and very snazzy if you use multiple telnets (even
snazzier, and with less load on the system, if you use X and have the
emacs backgrounded and showing on your display graphically).

I'll try that out.  Thanks much!

Response not possible - You must register and login before posting.

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss