If encoding and decoding '' did reproduce '', you could then complain that encoding and decoding undef would not reproduce undef (but '' instead)...

Reason is that uuencoding-wise, there is no way to distinguish an empty string from an undefined value, so it's simply an implementation choice which variant appears to be less of an issue in the typical case.

In reply to Re: UU-decode unpack of empty string yields undefined value by almut
in thread UU-decode unpack of empty string yields undefined value by AnomalousMonk

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