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shell - Interpreter for shell archives
shell [ file... ]
This
program interprets enough UNIX shell syntax, and command usage, to enable
it to unpack many different types of UNIX shell archives, or ``shar's.'' It is
primarily intended to be used on non-UNIX systems that need to unpack such
archives.
Shell does not check for security holes, and will blithely execute
commands like
cp /dev/null /etc/passwd
which, if executed by the super-user,
can be disastrous.
The shell parser is line-based, where lines are then split
into tokens; it is not a true token-based parser. In general, it is best
if all sh keywords that can appear alone on a line do so, and that compound
commands (i.e., using a semi-colon) be avoided. For more details on the syntax,
see the source (sorry...).
It is probably easier to write a true portable
replacement for /bin/sh than it is to write something which understands
all shar formats.
shar(1l)
.
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