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.
