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From: thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: Why are binaries both Sharred and uuencoded?
Message-ID: <37651@cup.portal.com>
Date: 6 Jan 91 12:05:52 GMT
References: <37619@cup.portal.com>
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Lines: 30

-Rich-@cup.portal.com (Richard Sherman Payne) in <37619@cup.portal.com> 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).
	[...]

Some of the characters that appear in the uuencoded portion of a posting "may"
do bad things when they appear at the left margin and pass through the news
software at certain sites.

Yes, it's more overhead, but how better to assure the contents won't be
munged as they pass through IBM/370, VAX/VMS, Intel, non-8-bit ASCII systems,
non-ASCII systems, etc. on their way to you?

Shar'ing is the price we pay for RELIABILITY, same as Kermit (in a slightly
different context) is about the only 100% guaranteed way to be able to send
files between any 2 arbitrary systems.  As a historical note, Kermit started
when students at Columbia needed to pass files between an IBM mainframe, a
DEC-20, and an IBM-PC ... that trio probably represents one of the worst-case
scenarios imaginable for data transfer, yet Kermit comes through smelling like
a rose.

BTW, since you're on PORTAL, you CAN get a lot of the net stuff in the Amiga
SIG already ZOO'd, LHARC'd, whatever.  Take a look at PORTAL's top-level menu.

Thad Floryan [ thad@cup.portal.com (OR) ..!sun!portal!cup.portal.com!thad ]