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sharchive

sharchive


  2  definitions  found 
 
  From  Jargon  File  (4.2.3,  23  NOV  2000)  [jargon]: 
 
  sharchive  /shar'ki:v/  n.  [Unix  and  Usenet;  from  /bin/sh 
  archive]  A  {flatten}ed  representation  of  a  set  of  one  or  more  files, 
  with  the  unique  property  that  it  can  be  unflattened  (the  original 
  files  restored)  by  feeding  it  through  a  standard  Unix  shell;  thus 
  a  sharchive  can  be  distributed  to  anyone  running  Unix,  and  no  special 
  unpacking  software  is  required.  Sharchives  are  also  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  downsides  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.) 
  Sharchives  are  also  commonly  referred  to  as  `shar  files'  after  the  name 
  of  the  most  common  program  for  generating  them 
 
 
 
  From  The  Free  On-line  Dictionary  of  Computing  (13  Mar  01)  [foldoc]: 
 
  sharchive 
 
  {shar}