Yenc

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 Extended ASCII encoding method. yEnc's overhead is often (if each byte value appears approximately with the same frequency on average) as little as 1–2% (see http://www.yenc.org/yenc-draft.1.3.txt), 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 has become the de facto standard encoding system for binary files on Usenet.