Self extracting archive

["A.Sajjad Zaidi" <sajjad@example.com>]

Ive seen it a few times, but isnt very common in linux. I know Quake III
test was distributed as a single executable archive. How is this done?

My guess is that the actual archive is appended to the shell script and
is extracted when executed. Is that right? It would be convenient to
have the configure or install script run at the same time as the
extraction.

Thanks,

A.Sajjad Zaidi