Path: utzoo!attcan!telly!lethe!torsqnt!hybrid!chance!john
From: john@chance.UUCP (John R. MacMillan)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: An idea for safer and portable unshar-ing
Summary: Include directives for unshar as comments in shar
Keywords: shar unshar
Message-ID: <1989Sep30.171114.12550@chance.UUCP>
Date: 30 Sep 89 17:11:14 GMT
Reply-To: john@chance.UUCP (John R. MacMillan)
Organization: Haphazard
Lines: 27

In order to make it easier for unshar programs to work without
using /bin/sh, perhaps we should agree (hah!) upon some keyword
directives that shar programs would include as comments. Eg.

# FILE filename
# NOEXIST
# DATA prefix end_delimiter
# SIZE [l LINES] [w WORDS] [c CHARS]
# CONTINUE filename
# EXIST
# DECODE how
# SUBDIR directory

This is just a first shot, but you get the idea.  The unpacker
could be as paranoid as it wants.  If the shar wants to get
trickier than the keywords allow, it could, and the unpacker
would just not do the tricky parts (perhaps a SKIP or WARN
directive).  But notice that the above could handle a uuencoded
compressed file split across two parts that ends up in a
subdirectory.

The tough part would be getting people to make their shar
programs generate it.
-- 
John R. MacMillan           "Don't you miss it...don't you miss it...
john@chance.UUCP             Some of you people just about missed it."
...!utcsri!hcr!chance!john        -- Talking Heads