jim (10/19/82)
Dave Ihnat's response to my shell archiver script was bogus. He didn't understand the purpose of the script. The script has nothing to do with "ar", except that it bundles up a bunch of files into one big file. It does not use "ar" to do so, but rather produces a shell script containing the text of the "archived" files. "shar" should work fine as long as "cat" and the Bourne shell are around. Sorry for the confusion, Dave.
mark (10/19/82)
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.
ignatz (10/28/82)
You're quite right. I'm so ashamed. It was a long day, and the Buffalo were grazing in my head. Your script is just fine; it does a good job. Arrrggggh. Abashedly yours, Dave Ihnat ihuxx!ignatz