How Can We Figure Out Why Certain Uuencoded Files Are Not Decoding Properly Using Python?

We are trying to decode some uuencoded PDF files that are embedded in a txt file. The problem we have is that most of the PDF files decoded just fine using Python's uuencode librar

Solution 1:

>>>uu.decode(open('0000000000-11-005978.txt'))
Warning: Trailing garbage

The source data itself is damaged. This is further evidenced by the .. at the beginning of a line near the end.

Solution 2:

$ python -c "import urllib2; print len(urllib2.urlopen('http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/914257/000000000011005978/0000000000-11-005978.txt').read().decode('uu'))"
43124

works just fine.