Mailing an attachment

Hi,

I need to compress (zip) a flat file and mail the same as an attachment.
I had tried the following piece of code. But when i open the attachment in mail, the data is incorrect (displays all junk characters).

tar cf abc.tar abc.txt
compress abc.tar
uuencode abc.tar.Z abc1.wri | mailx -s "Audit report" xxxx@rediffmail.com

Note: I have already created a file abc.txt.

Thanks.