shar

shar (an abbreviation of shell archive) is an archive format in the Unix operating system. An archive is a collection of computer files that have been packaged together for transport to some other location or for backup while the archive format is the file format used in archiving. An archive format can be multi-function formats that can create error detection and recovery information, concatenate, encrypt, compress, and package the archive into self-extracting and self-expanding files or compression only formats that only compress files. The shar format is an archiving format that is capable of concatenating files, and creates self-extracting files. Since it is self-extracting, executing the application will recreate the files. shar files can be created with the Unix shar utility, and extracting the files require only the standard Unix Bourne shell sh. It is not formally a component of Unix but a legacy utility that is not specified by a Single Unix Specification.