exotic shell sought

[Helmut Jarausch <jarausch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

is there a switch or a special symlink name
which enables zsh to simulate a probably
extremely old shell.

I'd need this to install Sun's java runtime environment 
jre-1_5_0_06-linux-i586.bin

This is a self extracting shell script.
(the first line is  #!/bin/sh)

Unfortunately it fails, with a 
dirname too many arguments
error.
This old shell probably has a different
string quoting mechanism.

Many thanks for a hint,

Helmut Jarausch

Lehrstuhl fuer Numerische Mathematik
RWTH - Aachen University
D 52056 Aachen, Germany