Does anyone use ar(1) anymore?

[Jeff Lo]

> Now that I've gotten into the software distribution biz (GNU EMACS) I've
> learned all about tar and shar formats. Why doesn't anyone use ar
> anymore? It does pretty much what you want and for bundling files
> together doesn't offer any less functionality than tar or shar. Am I
> missing something?
> -- 
> ----------------
>   Marty Sasaki				net:   sasaki at harvard.{arpa,uucp}
>   Havard University Science Center	phone: 617-495-1270
>   One Oxford Street
>   Cambridge, MA 02138

ar isn't too commonly used for things like distributions because it doesn't
have the same format in all versions of UNIX. For example, in 4.2BSD, (perhaps
somewhat earlier) ar was changed to be completey ascii rather than part binary
so that mailers could handle it. However, not everyone has 4.2, so shar was
invented since all you need to unpack it is the Bourne shell, which every UNIX
site has.

Jeff Lo

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