Improved Connoisseur's Shar

code 101 honey at down.FUN
Thu Jan 10 14:26:33 AEST 1985


in re: shell archives in net.sources (see Ref's line articles).

this whole circus drives me crazy!  shell archives were first
popularized in '82 or so, in the form of 6 line scripts, e.g.,

	echo '# To unbundle, sh this file'
	for i in $*; do
		echo "cat >$i <<'//GO.SYSIN DD *'"
		cat $i
		echo "//GO.SYSIN DD *"
	done

some people added echo on extraction, others added a prefix character
to protect against >From, others added basename.  this turned a simple
6 line script into a simple 8 line script.

but wait!  here's a 2000+ line c program that runs several times
slower, does not protect against >From, requires the recipient to edit
the archive before extracting it, and has a host of other ills.

punch line:  by all appearances, the authors are proud of their work.
amazing.

-- peter



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