Comparing data of two text files/UUencode

Good Day to all,
I have a few questions in mind.
1) I have just learnt smtp using winsock in vb6, and i find out that the attachment needs to be encoded using methods like UUencode,MIME etc. But i have some queries about UUencode. Does anyone has a good reference for this encoding algo? (besides vbip as i have read from there). I am curious about decoding is done as I have this UUencode function which will encode in chr() and add on to the message body if the mail. Although sucessfully received by the receiptant, where is the decoding algo? from the smtp mail itself?
2) I have read about the inefficiency of UUencode and thought that I would like to do an auto check between the files received and the orginal (right copy) text file. Assuming I have the two files, does anyone has an approach to compare the date (content) of the two files to make sure that they are identical?

Thanks

Regards
Goh