silvert@cs.dal.ca (Bill Silvert) (09/29/89)
In article <570@crdos1.crd.ge.COM> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes: > If the problem is that your unshar can't handle the files, that's a >legitimate problem, but it will be better solved if the cause is >understood. shar2 produces complex shell scripts which do error >checking. If someone wants to have the ability to bypass the error >checking, that's a good idea, and I will probably put it in the new >version, via an environment variable, such as ERRCHK={yes,no,warn} or >some such. I don't intend to produce a version which doesn't produce >error checking code. I agree with this philosophy, but consistently run into problems with the refusal of most shar'd programs to overwrite existing files. This is a useful precaution, but when you regularly distribute a package of files too small to bother with patches, as I do, you need to be able to overwrite the old versions. I modified an old copy of shar that I had so that when it discovers an existing file it offers the user the option of overwriting it or not, and you can also choose either to quit at that point or to keep overwriting without further query. This is a trivial addition, and I find it very useful. I recommend it to any shar developers. -- Bill Silvert, Habitat Ecology Division. Bedford Institute of Oceanography, Dartmouth, NS, Canada B2Y 4A2 UUCP: ...!{uunet,watmath}!dalcs!biomel!bill Internet: biomel@cs.dal.CA BITNET: bs%dalcs@dalac.BITNET