Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!bloom-beacon!bu-cs!dartvax!eleazar.dartmouth.edu!earleh
From: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.programmer
Subject: Re: Unix shell archive files and MPW
Summary: tar, compress
Message-ID: <9129@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU>
Date: 5 Jul 88 22:21:43 GMT
References: <1431@pembina.UUCP>
Sender: news@dartvax.Dartmouth.EDU
Reply-To: earleh@eleazar.dartmouth.edu (Earle R. Horton)
Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
Lines: 30

In article <1431@pembina.UUCP> simon@alberta.UUCP (Simon Tortike) writes:
>
>Is it possible to unpack a Unix shell archive from within MPW, or must I 
>do this in my Unix environment first?

It's not presently possible to unpack shell archives from within MPW
(at least not without the addition of more tools), but you can save
yourself some time downloading, and get any directory structure
specified by the shell archive transfered to your Mac, by doing
something like this.

a) Unpack the archive on the UNIX box.
b) Use tar to archive the resulting set of files/directories into a file.
  "tar cf /tmp/myjunkfilename ."
c) Compress the tar file, download it in binary mode.
  "compress /tmp/myjunkfilename ; macput -d /tmp/myjunkfilename.Z"
d) Un-tar, un-compress on the Mac.

MacCompress by Lloyd Chambers can be had by anonymous InterNet ftp
from labrea.stanford.edu (/pub).  It was up to version 3.0 last time I
checked.  Two versions of tar for the Mac have been released that I
know of.  One is an application, and the other is a pair of MPW tools.
All are compatible with the corresponding UNIX utilities, and can
optionally convert linefeeds to carriage returns.  All are FREE.

Compressed tar files also provide a handy mechanism for saving stuff.
ASCII text compresses quite well, and quite large postings can
therefore be saved on a single Mac floppy.

Earle Horton