Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!cornell!uw-beaver!tektronix!uunet!cme-durer!brickman From: brickman@cme-durer.ARPA (Jonathan E. Brickman) Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d Subject: Re: A Dumb Idea Message-ID: <581@rtg.cme-durer.ARPA> Date: 13 Aug 88 21:48:26 GMT References: <17362@gatech.edu> Reply-To: brickman@rtg (Jonathan E. Brickman) Organization: The National Bureau of Standards Lines: 21 In article <17362@gatech.edu> jkg@gatech.UUCP (Jim Greenlee) writes: >In reading the discussion about ARC vs. PK{ARC|PAK} vs. ZOO, a thought occurred >to me that I have never seen addressed in this newsgroup: > > What exactly is it that people have against compressed tar files? > >Using compress and tar would seem to solve a lot of compatibility problems >since it is already an established "standard" in many environments (am I >pre-supposing again? :-). Does anybody have any thoughts on this, or is it >just "a dumb idea"? > > Jim Greenlee Compressed tar files are reasonably standard on Unix machines, but on no other. Sure, compression and tar programs for MS-DOS machines exist, but the examples I've seen have all been cumbersome and slow. Just in case you didn't realize it, the PKARC format was extremely compact (consistently around 50% compression), and extremely fast (it would unpack a 100,000 byte file faster than the copy command would copy it). I'll take that kind of speed and consistency, thank you very much, over any kind of tradition. ||Jonathan E. Brickman