The Perl Encryption Assistant is a command line tool meant to help encrypting large numbers of files in one go using gpg. Pea accepts a number of useful options: specifying a source and destination directory, keeping a logfile, making backup copies and batch conversion of file names. On default pea processes all files in the current working directory and has them encrypted by gpg. It deletes the original, unencrypted files and moves the new, encrypted files to a subdirectory ./pea. The behavior of the program can be fine tuned with several options.

The use of pea makes, of course, only sense on a system on which gpg is installed. Just as Perl itself, pea is portable and should thus work on all Unices.