Shc the shell script compiler


SHC is a shell script compiler for Unix-like operating systems written in C programming language. The Shell Script Compiler encodes and encrypts unix shell scripts into executable binaries. Compiling shell scripts into binaries provides protection against accidental changes and source modification, and is a way of hiding source code written in unix shell scripting language.

Mechanism

SHC takes a shell script which is specified on the command line by option and produces a C source code of the script with added cipher. The generated source code is then compiled and linked to produce a binary executable. Thus it's a two step process where, at first step, it creates a filename.x.c file of the shell script file filename. Then it is compiled with cc -$CFLAGS filename.x.c and thus build the binary from a C source code with the default C compiler available in any system.
The compiled binary will still be dependent on the shell specified in the first line of the shell code, thus shc does not create completely independent binaries.
shc itself is not a compiler such as the C compiler, it rather encodes and encrypts a shell script and generates C source code with the added expiration capability. It then uses the system C compiler to compile the source shell script and build a stripped binary which behaves exactly like the original script. Upon execution, the compiled binary will decrypt and execute the code with the shells' -c option.

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