Binhex

Short for BINary-HEXadecimal. Binhex is a method of converting binary files, which are 8-bits wide, into 7-bit ASCII files, which are text files. This allows data files to be sent through most electronic mail systems (many of which can’t deal with the 8-bit data structure) as text. There are other methods, but the binhex format is especially popular for dealing with Macintosh files because it is one of the only ones that handles both the resource and data forks found in Macintosh files. Binhexed files generally have the suffix .hqx, or (in older versions) .hex.