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From: ts@uwasa.fi (Timo Salmi)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d,news.newusers.questions
Subject: Re: Uncompressing *.tar(shar) files on PC's
Message-ID: <1991Jun14.205524.12581@uwasa.fi>
Date: 14 Jun 91 20:55:24 GMT
References: <91165.094808U10215@uicvm.uic.edu>
Organization: University of Vaasa, Finland
Lines: 58

In article <91165.094808U10215@uicvm.uic.edu> U10215@uicvm.uic.edu writes:
>
>Dear Sir:

I am reminded of Pepparmint Patty from Peanuts :-).

>Is there any way of getting *.shar (tar).Z files to a PC from ftp sites
>and uncompressing some available utilities?
>
>What I know is DOS support only one file extension (fn.tar) not two file
>extensions (fn.tar.Z)?
>
>I transferred fn.tar.Z file to my PC as fn.tar and untarred it; it didn`t
>work at all.  Can you recommend some solutions?

Not that simple.  There are _two_ steps, not just the one you
attempted.  You must first uncompress the .Z, and then untar the
.tar while juggling a bit with the file names, since two periods are
not accepted by MsDos. 

Here is some more info from /pc/ts/tsfaq21.arc Frequently Asked
Questions:

From: ts@uwasa.fi
Subject: MsDos compress for .Z files, etc
Date: Fri 14 Jun 00:00:23 1991

23. *****
 Q: Where can I find compress for MsDos to handle .Z files?

 A: Unix has compress, uncompress and zcat programs to pack or
unpack files which are given the .Z extension. These files can also
be handled under MsDos using for example /pc/unix/comp430d.zip,
which is available from anonymous FTP sites like garbo.uwasa.fi,
SIMTEL20, etc.
   There is one useful trick if you uncompress on MsDos such text
files that have been made on Unix with compress. Unix and MsDos have
different eolns (end of lines). You can extract a Unix compressed
text file as follows
      comp430d -d -c YourZFile | unix2pc > YourOutputFile
where unix2pc.exe is taken from /pc/ts/tsfilt17.arc (or whatever is
the current verion number).
   While we are at it let's look at two similar questions of MsDos
counterparts for Unix file handling. Uuencoding and uudecoding is a
common method to handle files so that they can be sent as ordinary
ascii email. There are several utilities for uu(en/de)coding files
on a PC in our /pc/decode directory. One that I can recommend in
uuexe413.zip, which has an option to use formats like the one
employed in the comp.binaries.ibm.pc binary postings.
   Yet another often queried counterpart for Unix is tar for MsDos.
See our directory /pc/unix for tar extractor utilities such as
extar10.zip (or whatever version number is current).
--------------------------------------------------------------------
...................................................................
Prof. Timo Salmi
Moderating at garbo.uwasa.fi anonymous ftp archives 128.214.12.37
School of Business Studies, University of Vaasa, SF-65101, Finland
Internet: ts@chyde.uwasa.fi Funet: gado::salmi Bitnet: salmi@finfun