
``binhex`` --- Encode and decode binhex4 files
**********************************************

This module encodes and decodes files in binhex4 format, a format
allowing representation of Macintosh files in ASCII.  On the
Macintosh, both forks of a file and the finder information are encoded
(or decoded), on other platforms only the data fork is handled.

Warning: In 3.0, special Macintosh support is removed.

The ``binhex`` module defines the following functions:

binhex.binhex(input, output)

   Convert a binary file with filename *input* to binhex file
   *output*. The *output* parameter can either be a filename or a
   file-like object (any object supporting a ``write()`` and
   ``close()`` method).

binhex.hexbin(input[, output])

   Decode a binhex file *input*. *input* may be a filename or a file-
   like object supporting ``read()`` and ``close()`` methods. The
   resulting file is written to a file named *output*, unless the
   argument is omitted in which case the output filename is read from
   the binhex file.

The following exception is also defined:

exception binhex.Error

   Exception raised when something can't be encoded using the binhex
   format (for example, a filename is too long to fit in the filename
   field), or when input is not properly encoded binhex data.

See also:

   Module ``binascii``
      Support module containing ASCII-to-binary and binary-to-ASCII
      conversions.


Notes
=====

There is an alternative, more powerful interface to the coder and
decoder, see the source for details.

If you code or decode textfiles on non-Macintosh platforms they will
still use the old Macintosh newline convention (carriage-return as end
of line).

As of this writing, ``hexbin()`` appears to not work in all cases.
