acw@Apple.COM (Art Willis) (04/14/90)
In article <47895@lanl.gov> tburns@mpx1.lampf.lanl.gov writes: >Hello fellow netters, > I have some text files (off of a mainframe ftp site) which >have a .tar.Z or a .shar.Z extension. Is there any way to >dearchive these guys on a mac? I looked at sumex, but did >not notice any likely looking titles, aside from MacArc, which >did not do the trick. I want to dearchive these things on my >mac, _not_ on a mainframe. > >Any help would be greatly appreciated. > > Tim Burns > MacCompress will convert a ".Z" into a non ".Z" file, i.e. will uncompress it. The version of MacCompress that I have, is 3.2. I don't know if there is a later one. Once a *.tar.Z file has been uncompressed to yield *.tar, you can use MacTar to "untar" it. My version of MacTar is 2.0. Again, there may be a later one. Both of the programs are probably available from sumex-aim.stanford.edu. I don't know if there is a mac version of shar available. You can unshar a shar file on the Mac manually using a text editor, but it would be tedious. Basically, you just need to cut up the file into the separate files and delete the prefix letter (usually X). The files are separated by delimiter strings such as "END_OF_FILE" or "funky_stuff" which are specified at the beginning of each section of the shar file. Be sure that line delimiter conversion is done properly when moving files between a unix system and a Macintosh, i.e. for ASCII text files convert new-line (line-feed) to carriage return (or vice-versa), but don't do this for binary files, such as .Z and .tar files. MacTar provides an option to do this as it untars files, which is convenient to use. Hope this answers your questions. Art Willis acw@apple.com