cgd wrote in reply to bug bin/2226:

>Looking at the SCCS logs on vangogh, i see that the change was brought
>in back in 1985 (!!), and was part of "bug fixes and changes from Rick
>Adams."  Sounds like the format was changed, the docs weren't updated,
>and the old format is still decoded because some systems still use it.

Trivia time...

It was changed to make uuencode more resilient against mailers stripping
trailing whitespace. The change was needed especially if you were on
Bitnet, which is why I remember having looked into it...

Backtick was chosen because a) it was otherwise unused and b) mapped to
space in at least some existing uudecodes. My version on VMS had to be
hacked of course :-)

                                        -- Bert Driehuis

------
Bert Driehuis                 God, grant me the serenity to accept the things
driehuis@playbeing.org        I can't change, courage to change the things I
                              can, and the wisdom to know the difference.