<s>
xxencode	B-Device
is	O
a	O
binary-to-text	O
encoding	O
similar	O
to	O
uuencode	B-Device
which	O
uses	O
only	O
the	O
alphanumeric	O
characters	O
,	O
and	O
the	O
plus	O
and	O
minus	O
signs	O
.	O
</s>
<s>
It	O
was	O
invented	O
as	O
a	O
means	O
to	O
transfer	O
files	O
in	O
a	O
format	O
which	O
would	O
survive	O
character	O
set	O
translation	O
,	O
particularly	O
that	O
between	O
ASCII	B-Protocol
and	O
the	O
EBCDIC	B-Language
encoding	O
used	O
on	O
IBM	O
mainframes	O
.	O
</s>
<s>
xxencode	B-Device
repeatedly	O
takes	O
in	O
groups	O
of	O
three	O
bytes	O
,	O
adding	O
trailing	O
zeroes	O
if	O
there	O
are	O
fewer	O
than	O
three	O
bytes	O
left	O
.	O
</s>
<s>
xxencoded	O
data	O
is	O
generally	O
distinguishable	O
from	O
Uuencoded	B-Device
data	O
by	O
the	O
first	O
character	O
of	O
the	O
line	O
( 	O
 '	O
h	O
 '	O
for	O
Xxencode	B-Device
,	O
'	O
M	O
 '	O
for	O
Uuencode	B-Device
)	O
.	O
</s>
<s>
The	O
following	O
is	O
an	O
example	O
of	O
xxencoding	B-Device
a	O
one-line	O
text	O
file	O
.	O
</s>
