Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!wuarchive!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!ginosko!uunet!bywater!acheron!clarke
From: clarke@acheron.uucp (Ed Clarke/10240000)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt
Subject: Re: Compression format of AIX
Message-ID: <1989Oct3.221135.21254@acheron.uucp>
Date: 3 Oct 89 22:11:35 GMT
References: <13906@well.UUCP>
Organization: Ciliophora Associates
Lines: 23

From article <13906@well.UUCP>, by gors@well.UUCP (Gordon Stewart):
> Is it my imagination, or does AIX (RT) have its own idea of what file
> compression means?  Is there a way to uncompress standard .Z files
> using AIX 2.2.1?  If not, does anyone out there have a public domain version
> of uncompress/zcat that I could have?  I really would like to get at those
> public domain sources which are stored in compressed format.

'compress' does not come with AIX in any flavor.  You might be looking at
packed ( ends with a lower case .z instead of an upper case one ) instead
of compressed format.  It's quicker/easier to unpack a file rather than to
uncompress it.   As far as I know, only man pages are normally packed.  The
packed format is almost always larger than a compressed version.

'compress' is part of 'B' news.  It compiles easily ( but needs the -a
compile option ) and works on AIX.  The source is 35k - see if you can
get it locally, otherwise I can send it to you.

There is an 'uncompress'(?) or something that comes with the PL8 compiler.
That's something totally different that I'm not familiar with.

-- 
Ed Clarke
acheron!clarke