Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!wuarchive!usc!apple!vsi1!zorch!xanthian From: xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga Subject: Re: Why are binaries both Sharred and uuencoded? Message-ID: <1991Jan6.034235.10543@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> Date: 6 Jan 91 03:42:35 GMT References: <37619@cup.portal.com> Organization: SF-Bay Public-Access Unix Lines: 25 -Rich-@cup.portal.com (Richard Sherman Payne) writes: > I just recently started checking out the binaries, and was surprised > to find that the programs are both Sharred and uuencoded. I was > wondering if anyone could tell my why? Would'nt it be sufficient to > just uuencode the files? This also requires more disk space than just > uudecoding the files would require (I do not like to erase the > intermediate files till I get a working file). > It seems that sharring is an unnecessary step that has no value, and > adds an extra step to extracting the binary. A couple of reasons. First, lots of folks have "unshar" on the Amiga, which lets you unpack articles without editing them, a big time saver when you're downloading a 20 part posting. Second, uuencoded files (sometimes) have line by line checksum characters, but not an overall sanity check, so if a whole line is dropped, your first warning will be a guru or a failed unzoo. If you have a shar packing, you get an overall character count for the uuencode chunk, which provides a little more robustness. Kent, the man from xanth.