file format A Macintosh format for representing a binaryfile using only printable characters. The file is

converted to lines of letters, numbers and punctuation.

Because BinHex files are simply text they can be sent through

most electronic mail systems and stored on most computers.

However the conversion to text makes the file larger, so it

takes longer to transmit a file in BinHex format than if the

file was represented some other way.