BSD Unix BinHex 4.0 clone wanted

[Kent Paul Dolan]

Another burst of intense frustration as I find more interesting looking
material posted in BinHex 4.0 format. If you're running anything but a
Mac, this is a wonderful encryption technique; no one else can read your
source code, which makes sharing it with the net a limited utility
operation. It also makes repacking into an lharc archive perform poorly.

Does there exist (I checked for "binhex" as a string in a dump
of the names in the comp.sources.unix and comp.sources.misc archives
to no avail) a Unix version of binhex to unpack these files and put
them into some useful archive format?  (Same question for PKZIP, I
suppose; I have several PKZIP archives I can't unpack but keep around
in a grand burst of optimism.)

Alternately, does there exist a clear text format description for
BinHex files, and I'll roll my own unarchiver.

Thanks; followups to comp.sources.d, or send email and I'll post a
summary of anything interesting there in a week or so.  "Me too's" to
me by email, please; use some sense.

Kent, the man from xanth.
<xanthian at Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian at well.sf.ca.us>