Beyond shar (Re: shars and security concerns.)

[Kent Paul Dolan]

In article <18123 at well.sf.ca.us> Jef Poskanzer <jef at well.sf.ca.us> writes:
>In the referenced message, tneff at bfmny0.UU.NET (Tom Neff) wrote:
>}                       UCT transmission savings are illusory since most
>}newsfeeds are compressed anyway.
>
>Most newsfeeds are compressed, yes.  But most news is transmitted over
>uncompressed feeds.  Why?  Because NNTP feeds are not compressed.
>
>The reason I don't like compressed tar files is that you have to have
>all parts before you can begin to unpack and peruse.

Beyond that, shar is widely used to port sources away from Unix (granted
zoo is more appropriate, shar's _are_ human readable), and "tar" is not
often available on the target systems.

I have, for example, many files ported to my Amiga in shar format, and
an "unshar" program that imitates the actions of "sh" well enough to unpack
most common shar output.

Kent, the man from xanth.
(xanthian at zorch.sf-bay.org)