sharchive /shar'ki:v/ n.
[Unix and Usenet; from /bin/sh archive] A flattened representation of a set of one or
more files, with the unique property that it can be unflattened
(the original files restored) by feeding it through a standard
Unix shell; thus, a sharchive can be distributed to anyone
running Unix, and no special unpacking software is required.
Sharchives are also intriguing in that they are typically created
by shell scripts; the script that produces sharchives is thus a
script which produces self-unpacking scripts, which may
themselves contain scripts. (The downsides of sharchives are that
they are an ideal venue for Trojan
horse attacks and that, for recipients not running Unix,
no simple un-sharchiving program is possible; sharchives can and
do make use of arbitrarily-powerful shell features.) Sharchives
are also commonly referred to as `shar files' after the name of
the most common program for generating them.