Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!ns-mx!umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu!williams
From: williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu (Kent Williams)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Why are postings NOT in shar form
Message-ID: <3415@ns-mx.uiowa.edu>
Date: 4 Dec 90 15:39:23 GMT
References: <1717@syteke.be>
Sender: news@ns-mx.uiowa.edu
Reply-To: williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu.UUCP (Kent Williams)
Organization: U of Iowa, Iowa City, IA
Lines: 40

In article <1717@syteke.be> jim@syteke.be (Jim Sanchez) writes:
>I may have missed something a long while back but it seems odd that
>all the binary postings in this group seem to require editing to
>remove the headers/etc.  Given that most (I assume) are reading
>and posting news from *NIX type machines, why don't the uuencoded
>files get wrapped up so a simple sh <file> will expose them.
>-- 
First of all, they are generally too big to pass undigested through
some of the mail relays.  Second of all, Unix isn't universal -- I
used to get my news through PARTI on a Prime via BITNET.

If you're on a Unix box, I have a simple method for getting postings
saved in order:

1. Save each part in a different file, with a common stem -- e.g. if
foo.zoo gets posted in 5 parts, save foo1, foo2, foo3, foo4, foo5.

2. Run the following script over foo* :

#!/bin/sh
echo unpacking from $* to `grep begin $1`
cat $* | sed '/END--/,/BEGIN--/d' | uudecode

for example, if the above happens to be called unpack, then do

unpack foo*

If you have more than 10 parts, you have to be craftier, since the
wild card expansion in the shell will put the parts out of order,
since they get sorted in dictionary, rather than numeric, order, so
you have to do

unpack foo[0-9] foo1[0-9] foo2[0-9] etc. ...



--
             Kent Williams --- williams@umaxc.weeg.uiowa.edu 
"'Is this heaven?' --- 'No, this is Iowa'" - from the movie "Field of Dreams"
"This isn't heaven, ... this is Cleveland" - Harry Allard, in "The Stupids Die"