Title                    BINHEX
Keywords                 ASCII, Hexadecimal, Bitnet
Computer                 IBM PC/XT/AT
Operating System         MS-DOS
Programming Language     Turbo Pascal v. 5.0
Hardware Needed          IBM PC/XT/AT
Author                   H.O. Colijn
Correspondence Addr.     Ohio State University,
                         Central Electron Optics Facility
                         042 Fontana Labs
                         116 W. 19th Ave. Columbus, OH  43210-1110
                         (614)292-0674

Abstract:

Some computer networks (such as Bitnet) can transmit ASCII files only.
Others (such as Internet) require a special facility (i.e. ftp) to
transmit binary files, whereas ASCII files can be transmitted easily
using the MAIL facilities.  While this allows source code to be trans-
mitted easily, it is difficult to send executable programs, spectral
data files, or archived files.  Many word processing programs also use
non-ASCII characters to store document formatting information.  It is
difficult for people to exchange information in the format they desire
over computer networks.

This program will convert a binary file to and from the hexadecimal
equivalents of the binary bytes.  That is, each byte in the binary
file will be converted into 2 ASCII characters (0-9,A-F) corresponding
to the value of the high and low four bits (respectively) of the
binary value.  Thus, regardless of the contents of the original file,
the resulting file is strictly ASCII.  Note that this translation
doubles the original size of the file since each byte of the binary
file is converted into 2 ASCII characters, each requiring one byte.
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