ABE

File Format
Name	ABE
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Transfer Encodings ABE
Released	~1989

ABE is binary-to-text transfer encoding utility and format, developed by Brad Templeton. It converts an arbitrary file to an ASCII text format suitable for Usenet or email. It is Unix-centric, though intended to be portable.

The encoding is usually written all caps as "ABE". The software may be written "abe" or "Abe".

Identification

The format has no clear signature, though the string "##S" will appear somewhere near the beginning of the payload data.

Files made by the original software start with two comment lines:

;ABE ASCII-Binary-Encoding (by Brad Templeton)
;Use 'sort' and/or 'dabe' to decode

And end with:

;End of ABE encoding

Specifications

• Refer to the "abeformat" file included with the source code.

Software

• Source code: Author's home page → "ABE" → abe.tar.Z
• ABE.ZIP - DOS version
• abe.tar - An older version

Sample files

• dexvert samples — archive/abeEncoded