You can send binary files as well as text files via e-mail. Many people make the mistake of thinking of binary files as just executable files (program files usually ending in .exe). Binary files are actually anything that is not text; spreadsheets and database files would fit in this category.

You cannot just send a binary file through the mail and hope it gets there, though. You must first compress it to make it smaller (and thus faster to send) and then encode it. To compress the file use the compress command.

Command Format:

compress [options] filename

The following example uses the -v (verbose) option to compress a file called spread.sheet (verbose gives detailed output about the process):

$ compress -v spread.sheet

spread.sheet: Compression: 70.84% -- replaced with bin.file.z

The file is compressed and given a .Z suffix.