Could we have a standard "shar" file format?

[bill at persci.UUCP]

In article <4048 at amdcad.UUCP> jimb at amdcad.UUCP (Jim Budler) writes:
>>...
>>from within postings, but it looks for a line that starts with:
>> #!/bin/sh
>>or something like that. It does *NOT* work with shar files that start with
>>a colon in column 1 of the first line! I'm seeing a few of these coming over
>And what are the poor folk with v7 supposed to do? v7 sh recognizes
>a ':' as a comment and '#: program not found' for your solution.

Jim, if you re-read my previous posting, you may see that I'm not so concerned
about *which* format is used as I am about a *standard* format. The problem
(and it *is* a small one) is that an "unshar" script must be able to handle
all of the formats that people are using. Whether I type "csh foo", "sh foo",
"foo", or "unshar foo", it doesn't matter to me (forgive grammer, plz). I
would like to be able to treat (unpack) shar files one way, all the time.
Preferably not by editing them first to remove all the stuff at the top (I am
lazy and impatient, and vi and emacs are incredibly slow to come up), hence
the "unshar" script.

'Nuff said?
-- 
William Swan  {ihnp4,decvax,allegra,...}!uw-beaver!tikal!persci!bill