From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!zeppo!wheps!eagle!mhuxt!mhuxj!cbosgd!mark
Newsgroups: net.sources
Title: Re: Shell archiver
Article-I.D.: cbosgd.2699
Posted: Tue Oct 19 13:26:53 1982
Received: Wed Oct 20 01:49:55 1982
References: ihuxx.211

In fact, the latest, portable version of ar (from dmr) generates ASCII
images which can be mailed from system to system easily.  I have used
ar to transport files when my only link was cu and ~%put (this is
useful when porting UNIX to a brand new system, for instance) to get
uucp going.  However, this isn't a wonderful method for distributing
source files on USENET, because this version of ar isn't universally
available.  It's on all 4.1BSD systems, but it's not on V7, not in
system III, and not on any USG machine.  USG is rumored to have gone
instead to a different format, which is not ASCII and does not create
archives which are portable to different machines.