specify compression for input files. This option must not appear in
combination with any of the following options: vanilla-operation.
Allow positional parameter options. The compression method and encoding
method options may be intermixed with file names. Files named after these
options will be processed in the specified way.
specify compaction (compression) program.
This option may appear an unlimited number of times. This option must not
appear in combination with any of the following options: vanilla-operation.
The gzip, bzip2 and compress compactor commands may be specified by the
program name as the option name, e.g. --gzip. Those options, however, are
being deprecated. There is also the xz compactor now. Specify xz with -C
xz or --compactor=xz.
Specifying the compactor "none" will disable file compression.
Compressed files are never processed as plain text. They are always
uuencoded and the recipient must have uudecode to unpack them.
Specifying the compactor compress is deprecated.
pass LEVEL for compression.
This option takes an integer number as its argument. The value of
-Font]level] is constrained to being:
in the range 1 through 9
The default -Font]level] for this option is:
9
Some compression programs allow for a level of compression. The default is
9, but this option allows you to specify something else. This value is
used by gzip, bzip2 and xz, but not compress.
bzip2 and uuencode files.
This option may appear an unlimited number of times.
bzip2 compress and uuencode all files prior to packing. The recipient must
have uudecode bzip2 in order to unpack.
NOTE: THIS OPTION IS DEPRECATED
gzip and uuencode files.
This option may appear an unlimited number of times.
gzip compress and uuencode all files prior to packing. The recipient must
have uudecode and gzip in order to unpack.
NOTE: THIS OPTION IS DEPRECATED
compress and uuencode files.
This option may appear an unlimited number of times.
compress and uuencode all files prior to packing. The recipient must have
uudecode and compress in order to unpack.
NOTE: THIS OPTION IS DEPRECATED
This is an alias for the --level-of-compression option.
NOTE: THIS OPTION IS DEPRECATED
pass bits (default 12) to compress.
The default -Font]bits] for this option is:
12
This is the compression factor used by the compress program.
NOTE: THIS OPTION IS DEPRECATED
Specifying file encoding methodology
Files may be stored in the shar either as plain text or uuencoded. By
default, the program selects which by examining the file. You may force
the selection for all files. In intermixed option/file mode, this setting
may be changed during processing.
decide uuencoding for each file.
This option is a member of the mixed-uuencode class of options.
Automatically determine if the files are text or binary and archive
correctly. Files found to be binary are uuencoded prior to packing.
This is the default behavior for shar.
For a file to be considered a text file instead of a binary file, all
the following should be true:
The file does not contain any ASCII control character besides BS
(backspace), HT (horizontal tab), LF (new line) or FF (form feed).
The file contains no character with its eighth-bit set.
The file contains no line beginning with the five letters "from ",
capitalized or not. (Mail handling programs will often gratuitously
insert a > character before it.)
The file is either empty or ends with a LF (newline) byte.
No line in the file contains more than 200 characters. For counting
purpose, lines are separated by a LF (newline).
treat all files as binary.
This option is a member of the mixed-uuencode class of options.
Use uuencode prior to packing all files. This increases the size of
the archive. The recipient must have uudecode in order to unpack.
Compressed files are always encoded.
treat all files as text.
This option is a member of the mixed-uuencode class of options.
If you have files with non-ascii bytes or text that some mail handling
programs do not like, you may find difficulties. However, if you are
using FTP or SSH/SCP, the non-conforming text files should be okay.
Specifying file selection and output modes
print output to file PREFIX.nn.
Save the archive to files prefix.01 thru prefix.nn instead of sending
all output to standard out. Must be specified when the --whole-size-
limit or --split-size-limit options are specified.
When prefix contains a % character, prefix is then interpreted as a
sprintf format, which should be able to display a single decimal
number. When prefix does not contain such a % character, the string
.%02d is internally appended.
split archive, not files, to size.
This option is a member of the whole-size-limit class of options.
This option must appear in combination with the following options:
output-prefix. This option takes an integer number as its argument.
The value of -Font]size] is constrained to being:
in the range 8 through 1023, or
in the range 8192 through 4194304
Limit the output file size to size bytes, but don't split input files.
If size is less than 1024, then it will be multiplied by 1024. The
value may also be specified with a k, K, m or M suffix. The number is
then multiplied by 1000, 1024, 1000000, or 1048576, respectively. 4M
(4194304) is the maximum allowed.
Unlike the split-size-limit option, this allows the recipient of the
shar files to unpack them in any order.
split archive or files to size.
This option is a member of the whole-size-limit class of options.
This option must appear in combination with the following options:
output-prefix. This option takes an integer number as its argument.
The value of -Font]size] is constrained to being:
in the range 8 through 1023, or
in the range 8192 through 4194304
Limit output file size to size bytes, splitting files if necessary.
The allowed values are specified as with the --whole-size-limit
option.
The archive parts created with this option must be unpacked in the
correct order. If the recipient of the shell archives wants to put
all of them in a single email folder (file), they will have to be
saved in the correct order for unshar to unpack them all at once
(using one of the split archive options). see: unshar Invocation.
read file list from a file.
This option causes file to be reopened as standard input. If no files
are found on the input line, then standard input is read for input
file names. Use of this option will prohibit input files from being
listed on the command line.
Input must be in a form similar to that generated by find, one
filename per line. This switch is especially useful when the command
line will not hold the list of files to be archived.
If the --intermix-type option is specified on the command line, then
the compression options may be included in the standard input on lines
by themselves and no file name may begin with a hyphen.
For example:
{ echo --compact xz
find . -type f -print | sort
} | shar -S -p -L50K -o /somewhere/big
read file list from standard input.
This option is actually a no-op. It is a wrapper for --input-file-
list=-.
NOTE: THIS OPTION IS DEPRECATED
Controlling the shar headers
use name to document the archive.
Name of archive to be included in the subject header of the shar
files. See the --net-headers option.
override the submitter name.
shar will normally determine the submitter name by querying the
system. Use this option if it is being done on behalf of another.
output Submitted-by: & Archive-name: headers.
This option must appear in combination with the following options:
archive-name.
Adds specialized email headers:
Submitted-by: who@@where
Archive-name: name/part##
The who@@where is normally derived, but can be specified with the --
submitter option. The name must be provided with the --archive-name
option. If the archive name includes a slash (/) character, then the
/part## is omitted. Thus -n xyzzy produces:
xyzzy/part01
xyzzy/part02
while -n xyzzy/patch produces:
xyzzy/patch01
xyzzy/patch02
and -n xyzzy/patch01. produces:
xyzzy/patch01.01
xyzzy/patch01.02
start the shar with a cut line.
A line saying 'Cut here' is placed at the start of each output file.
translate messages in the script.
Translate messages in the script. If you have set the LANG
environment variable, messages printed by shar will be in the
specified language. The produced script will still be emitted using
messages in the lingua franca of the computer world: English. This
option will cause the script messages to appear in the languages
specified by the LANG environment variable set when the script is
produced.
Protecting against transmission issues
do not use `wc -c' to check size.
Do NOT check each file with 'wc -c' after unpack. The default is to
check.
do not use md5sum digest to verify.
Do not use md5sum digest to verify the unpacked files. The default is
to check.
apply the prefix character on every line.
Forces the prefix character to be prepended to every line, even if not
required. This option may slightly increase the size of the archive,
especially if --uuencode or a compression option is used.
use delim to delimit the files.
The default -Font]delim] for this option is:
SHAR_EOF
Use DELIM to delimit the files in the shar instead of SHAR_EOF. This
is for those who want to personalize their shar files. The delimiter
will always be prefixed and suffixed with underscores.
Producing different kinds of shars
produce very simple shars.
This option produces vanilla shars which rely only upon the existence
of echo, test and sed in the unpacking environment.
It changes the default behavior from mixed mode (--mixed-uuencode) to
text mode (--text-files). Warnings are produced if options are
specified that will require decompression or decoding in the unpacking
environment.
use temporary files between programs.
In the shar file, use a temporary file to hold file contents between
unpacking stages instead of using pipes. This option is mandatory
when you know the unpacking will happen on systems that do not support
pipes.
blindly overwrite existing files.
Create the archive so that when processed it will overwrite existing
files without checking first. If neither this option nor the --
query-user option is specified, the unpack will not overwrite pre-
existing files. In all cases, however, if --cut-mark is passed as a
parameter to the script when unpacking, then existing files will be
overwritten unconditionally.
sh shar-archive-file -c
ask user before overwriting files.
This option must not appear in combination with any of the following
options: vanilla-operation.
When unpacking, interactively ask the user if files should be
overwritten. Do not use for shars submitted to the net.
Use of this option produces shars which will cause problems with some
unshar-style procedures, particularly when used together with vanilla
mode (--vanilla-operation). Use this feature mainly for archives to
be passed among agreeable parties. Certainly, -X is not for shell
archives which are to be submitted to Usenet or other public networks.
The problem is that unshar programs or procedures often feed /bin/sh
from its standard input, thus putting /bin/sh and the shell archive
script in competition for input lines. As an attempt to alleviate
this problem, shar will try to detect if /dev/tty exists at the
receiving site and will use it to read user replies. But this does
not work in all cases, it may happen that the receiving user will have
to avoid using unshar programs or procedures, and call /bin/sh
directly. In vanilla mode, using /dev/tty is not even attempted.
do not restore modification times.
Avoid generating 'touch' commands to restore the file modification
dates when unpacking files from the archive.
When file modification times are not preserved, project build programs
like "make" will see built files older than the files they get built
from. This is why, when this option is not used, a special effort is
made to restore timestamps.
avoid verbose messages at unshar time.
Verbose OFF. Disables the inclusion of comments to be output when the
archive is unpacked.
restore in one directory, despite hierarchy.
Restore by the base file name only, rather than path. This option
causes only file names to be used, which is useful when building a
shar from several directories, or another directory. Note that if a
directory name is passed to shar, the substructure of that directory
will be restored whether this option is specified or not.
Internationalization options
do not internationalize.
Do not produce internationalized shell archives, use default English
messages. By default, shar produces archives that will try to output
messages in the unpackers preferred language (as determined by the
LANG/LC_MESSAGES environmental variables) when they are unpacked. If
no message file for the unpackers language is found at unpack time,
messages will be in English.
print directory with shar messages.
Prints the directory shar looks in to find messages files for
different languages, then immediately exits.
User feedback/entertainment
do not output verbose messages.
omit progress messages.
This is an alias for the --quiet option.
Display usage information and exit.
Pass the extended usage information through a pager.
Save the option state to cfgfile. The default is the last
configuration file listed in the OPTION PRESETS section, below. The
command will exit after updating the config file.
Load options from cfgfile.
The no-load-opts form will disable the loading of earlier
config/rc/ini files. --no-load-opts is handled early, out of order.
Output version of program and exit. The default mode is `v', a simple
version. The `c' mode will print copyright information and `n' will
print the full copyright notice.
OPTION PRESETS
Any option that is not marked as not presettable may be preset by loading
values from configuration ("RC" or ".INI") file(s). The file
"$HOME/.sharrc" will be used, if present.
WARNINGS
No attempt is made to restore the protection and modification dates for
directories, even if this is done by default for files. Thus, if a
directory is given to shar, the protection and modification dates of
corresponding unpacked directory may not match those of the original.
If a directory is passed to shar, it may be scanned more than once, to
conserve memory. Therefore, do not change the directory contents while
shar is running.
Be careful that the output file(s) are not included in the inputs or shar
may loop until the disk fills up. Be particularly careful when a directory
is passed to shar that the output files are not in that directory or a
subdirectory of it.
Use of the compression and encoding options will slow the archive process,
perhaps considerably.
Use of the --query-user produces shars which will cause problems with many
unshar procedures. Use this feature only for archives to be passed among
agreeable parties. Certainly, query-user is NOT for shell archives which
are to be distributed across the net. The use of compression in net shars
will cause you to be flamed off the earth. Not using the --no-timestamp or
--force-prefix options may also get you occasional complaints. Put these
options into your ~/.sharrc file.
FILES
See OPTION PRESETS for configuration files.
EXAMPLES
The first shows how to make a shell archive out of all C program sources.
The second produces a shell archive with all .c and archive of all
uuencoded .arc files, into numbered files starting from arc.sh.01. The
last example gives a shell archive which will use only the file names at
unpack time.
shar *.c > cprog.shar
shar -Q *.[ch] > cprog.shar
shar -B -l28 -oarc.sh *.arc
shar -f /lcl/src/u*.c > u.sh
EXIT STATUS
One of the following exit values will be returned:
Successful program execution.
The command options were misconfigured.
a specified input could not be found
open/close of specified directory failed
Resource limit/miscelleaneous shar command failure
There is a shar command bug. Please report it.
A specified configuration file could not be loaded.
libopts had an internal operational error. Please report
it to autogen-users@lists.sourceforge.net. Thank you.
SEE ALSO
unshar(1)
AUTHORS
The shar and unshar programs is the collective work of many authors. Many
people contributed by reporting problems, suggesting various improvements
or submitting actual code. A list of these people is in the THANKS file in
the sharutils distribution.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright (C) 1994-2015 Free Software Foundation, Inc. all rights reserved.
This program is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License,
version 3 or later.
BUGS
Please put sharutils in the subject line for emailed bug reports. It helps
to spot the message.
Please send bug reports to: bug-gnu-utils@gnu.org
NOTES
This manual page was AutoGen-erated from the shar option definitions.
