Sharchive

2 definitions found

From Jargon File (4.3.1, 29 Jun 2001) [jargon]:

  sharchive /shar'ki:v/ n. [Unix and Usenet; from /bin/sh archive] A
     {flatten}ed representation of a set of one or more files, with the
     unique property that it can be unflattened (the original files restored)
     by feeding it through a standard Unix shell; thus, a sharchive can be
     distributed to anyone running Unix, and no special unpacking software is
     required. Sharchives are also 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 downsides 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.) Sharchives are also
     commonly referred to as `shar files' after the name of the most common
     program for generating them.
  
  

From The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing (27 SEP 03) [foldoc]:

  sharchive
       
          {shar}