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Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bbn!papaya.bbn.com!rsalz
From: rsalz@bbn.com (Rich Salz)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.d
Subject: Re: File headers on shar files
Message-ID: <252@papaya.bbn.com>
Date: Fri, 4-Dec-87 14:53:31 EST
Article-I.D.: papaya.252
Posted: Fri Dec  4 14:53:31 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 9-Dec-87 05:15:22 EST
References: <393@ddsw1.UUCP>
Organization: BBN Laboratories, Cambridge MA
Lines: 39

In turgid prose, someone writes:
#I therefore propose that in the future, when sources (or any other 'shar'
#file) is posted, that the powers that be place any needed 'introduction'
#that preceeds the shar into the file in such a way that it will not
#interfere with the attempts of myself (and I bet others as well) to automate
#or simplify this unpacking.  This can be assured by simply insuring that the
#first character of each line is a "#", making it a shell comment line.

#Comments?

Don't look for it in comp.sources.unix, good luck in alt.sources, and I doubt
any of the other moderators will follow.  Here's why:

First, it's a pain to do.  It's not feasible to put the # in while writing
the text (things like "!}fmt -75" won't work) and it's a real pain to
have to put it in before posting -- one more thing to remember...

Second, from the mail I've got, people really want to see introductory info
to see if the source is worth saving, and they want to know *quickly*:-)
The "#" is hard to read -- I quoted the article above, just to make the
point.

Third, there have been a few "unshar" programs posted to the net, including
uuhosts and others for the automatically unpacking all the UUCP maps
(safely, via chroot and a feed in your news/sys file), and a couple of
heuristic programs for the general case (including a revision I wrote
for part of a general shar/unshar package).

Finally, there are compatibility problems, when source is shipped
world-wide:  not all shells understand "#" comments (V7 sh), and I've
gotten mail from BITNET where all # lines were lost, include #define
and #include.

I suppose it's time to repost my shar/makekit/unshar utilities... look
for two sets of them in early January (please don't send me mail asking
for it).
	/r$
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