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sharmore about shar

shar

 

  1  definition  found 
 
  From  The  Free  On-line  Dictionary  of  Computing  (13  Mar  01)  [foldoc]: 
 
  shar 
 
  file  format>  ("Shell  archive",  after  {ar}  and  {tar}) 
  Any  of  the  many  {Unix}  programs  that  creates  a  {flatten}ed 
  representation  of  one  or  more  files,  with  the  unique  property 
  that  it  can  be  unflattened  (the  original  files  extracted) 
  merely  by  feeding  it  through  a  standard  {Unix}  {shell}.  The 
  output  of  shar,  known  as  a  "shar  file"  or  "sharchive",  can  be 
  distributed  to  anyone  running  {Unix},  and  no  special  unpacking 
  software  is  required. 
 
  Sharchives  are  intriguing  in  that  they  are  typically  created 
  by  shell  scripts;  the  script  that  produces  sharchives  is  thus 
  a  script  which  produces  self-unpacking  scripts,  which  may 
  themselves  contain  scripts.  The  disadvantage  of  sharchives 
  are  that  they  are  an  ideal  venue  for  {Trojan  horse}  attacks 
  and  that  for  recipients  not  running  Unix,  no  simple 
  un-sharchiving  program  is  possible;  sharchives  can  and  do  make 
  use  of  arbitrarily-powerful  shell  features  and  other  Unix 
  commands. 
 
  Different  implementations  of  shar  vary  in  sophistication. 
  Some  just  {uuencode}  each  input  file  and  output  commands  to 
  {uudecode}  the  result,  others  include  extensive  checking  to 
  make  sure  the  files  have  been  transferred  without  corruption 
  and  that  all  parts  of  a  multi-file  sharchive  have  been 
  unpacked. 
 
  The  {unshar}  utility  strips  off  mail  and  news  headers  before 
  passing  the  remainder  of  its  input  to  sh 
 
  (1996-10-18)




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