SHELL

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: LOCAL
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NAME

shell - Interpreter for shell archives

SYNOPSIS

shell [ file ]

DESCRIPTION

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...).

BUGS

It is probably easier to write a true portable replacement for /bin/sh than it is to write something which understands all shar formats.