joe@auspyr.UUCP (Joe Angelo) (06/13/87)
I think it's time for a standard shar/text_ar format for news postings...
Something simple yet dynamic enough to work on any OS.
I know plenty of shar scripts exists, but not nearly enough unshar scripts
exists... and unpaking by hand (read: awk) is a royal pain with oo shar
scripts in the world... some use sed, some don't, all use thier own here-docy
end marker...etc, etc, etc
Why not create a standard format...like,
(news headers || mail headers)
[ pre-shar message from sender ]
START filename size perm
Xdata
Xdata
END
START filename size perm
Xdata
Xdata
END
The de-text_ar'er can check for sizes, permissions, make dirs, etc...
And the text_ar'er can splice the data into a number of files of X size, etc...
If someone doesn't have the de-text_ar'er, then the data isn't that much
harder to unpack. This format does give a little more security that shar files.
(I hate seeing cat <<EOF>/unix in shar files!!)
What kind of problems can one expect in doing something like this?
Geez, like this is really hard... why hasn't it been around for awhile?
Does everyone think that SHAR is the answer? A text-ar'er would seem
so much better ... you can de-text_ar it on any machine if you have
the de-text_er'er.
(Ps: I consider NOT having the de-sharer a problem as it can be posted
frequently... correct me if i'm wrong)
--
Joe Angelo, Sr. Sys. Engineer @ Austec, Inc., San Jose, CA.
"I'm not ARPA: auspyr!joe@lll-tis[-b].arpa PHONE: [408] 279-5533
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