GNU shar makes so-called shell archives out of
many files, preparing them for transmission by
electronic mail services. A shell archive is a
collection of files that can be unpacked by
/bin/sh. A wide range of features provide
extensive flexibility in manufacturing shars and
in specifying shar smartness. For example, shar
may compress files, uuencode binary files, split
long files and construct multi-part mailings,
ensure correct unsharing order, and provide
simplistic checksums. GNU unshar scans a set of
mail messages looking for the start of shell
archives. It will automatically strip off the mail
headers and other introductory text. The archive
bodies are then unpacked by a copy of the shell.
unshar may also process files containing
concatenated shell archives.
