1 definition found From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]: shar("Shell archive", after {ar} and {tar}) Any of the many {Unix} programs that creates a {flatten}ed representation of one or more files, with the unique property that it can be unflattened (the original files extracted) merely by feeding it through a standard {Unix} {shell}. The output of shar, known as a "shar file" or "sharchive", can be distributed to anyone running {Unix}, and no special unpacking software is required. Sharchives are intriguing in that they are typically created by shell scripts; the script that produces sharchives is thus a script which produces self-unpacking scripts, which may themselves contain scripts. The disadvantage of sharchives are that they are an ideal venue for {Trojan horse} attacks and that, for recipients not running Unix, no simple un-sharchiving program is possible; sharchives can and do make use of arbitrarily-powerful shell features and other Unix commands. Different implementations of shar vary in sophistication. Some just {uuencode} each input file and output commands to {uudecode} the result, others include extensive checking to make sure the files have been transferred without corruption and that all parts of a multi-file sharchive have been unpacked. The {unshar} utility strips off mail and news headers before passing the remainder of its input to sh. (1996-10-18)
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