-Rich-@cup.portal.com (Richard Sherman Payne) (01/06/91)
Hi, 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. Rich -Rich-@cup.portal.com
xanthian@zorch.SF-Bay.ORG (Kent Paul Dolan) (01/06/91)
-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. <xanthian@Zorch.SF-Bay.ORG> <xanthian@well.sf.ca.us>
thad@cup.portal.com (Thad P Floryan) (01/06/91)
-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 ]