YEnc

yEnc is a binary-to-text encoding scheme for transferring binary files in messages on Usenet or via e-mail. It reduces the overhead over previous US-ASCII-based encoding methods by using an 8-bit encoding method. yEnc's overhead is often (if each byte value appears approximately with the same frequency on average) as little as 1–2%,[1] compared to 33–40% overhead for 6-bit encoding methods like uuencode and Base64. yEnc was initially developed by Jürgen Helbing, and its first release was early 2001. By 2003 yEnc became the de facto standard encoding system for binary files on Usenet.[2] The name yEncode is a wordplay on "Why encode?", since the idea is to only encode characters if it is absolutely required to adhere to the message format standard.[3]

  1. ^ Helbing, Juergen (28 February 2002). "yEncode - A quick and dirty encoding for binaries". Retrieved 26 July 2014.
  2. ^ Fellows, G. (2006). "Newsgroups reborn – The binary posting renaissance". Digital Investigation. 3 (2): 73–78. doi:10.1016/j.diin.2006.04.006. ISSN 1742-2876.
  3. ^ Kim, Juhoon; Schneider, Fabian; Ager, Bernhard; Feldmann, Anja (2010). "Today's Usenet Usage: NNTP Traffic Characterization". 2010 INFOCOM IEEE Conference on Computer Communications Workshops. pp. 1–6. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.679.6023. doi:10.1109/INFCOMW.2010.5466665. ISBN 978-1-4244-6739-6. S2CID 18282467.