Linux System - Table 12 > Packages - Table 5 > sharutils

The sharutils package contains the GNU shar utilities, a set of tools for encoding and decoding packages of files (in binary or text format) in a special plain text format called shell archives (shar). This format can be sent through email (which can be problematic for regular binary files). The shar utility supports a wide range of capabilities (compressing, uuencoding, splitting long files for multi-part mailings, providing checksums), which make it very flexible at creating shar files. After the files have been sent, the unshartool scans mail messages looking for shar files. Unshar automatically strips off mail headers and introductory text and then unpacks the sharfiles. Install sharutils if you send binary files through email very often.