Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!uwvax!umn-d-ub!umn-cs!amit From: amit@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu (Neta Amit) Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc Subject: ARC/ZOO/TAR Message-ID: <3027@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu> Date: Mon, 30-Nov-87 11:45:38 EST Article-I.D.: umn-cs.3027 Posted: Mon Nov 30 11:45:38 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 3-Dec-87 04:22:06 EST Reply-To: amit@umn-cs.UUCP (Neta Amit) Distribution: na Organization: University of Minnesota Lines: 33 ARC (and derivatives) has been around for quite some time, and has developed into the MS-DOS de-facto standard for archiving and info-exchange. To me, the main advantage of ZOO is its ability to store structure, as well as contents. There are two disadvantages: (1) it is not widely accepted, and (2) it needs an external source to create the structure for it. I.e. lookup the ZOO manual under the -I switch, and notice that under Unix, the Find command creates the structure, which is subsequently given to ZOO. Under MS-DOS, Find is non-existant, and you need to specify the structure manually -- a tedious job. This weekend, a public domain TAR (courtesy John Gilmore) has been posted on comp.sources.unix, and is now implemented under Unix and MS-DOS. It is likely to be ported to VMS, MAC, Amiga. PDTAR offers a number of significant advantages over both ZOO and ARC: - It is the de-facto standard in the Unix world. Info-exchange with Unix machines is much easier with TAR. - It creates the structure it needs - It is fast; on the small sample that I did -- faster than ARC or ZOO - It can compress, and the resulting archive is small; on the sample above, smaller than the .arc or .zoo files Standards should occasionally be replaced by better standards, not necessarily offering downward compatability. After PDTAR will have stabilized, I suggest that BBS's and national archives adhere to it. -- Neta Amit U of Minnesota CSci Arpanet: amit@umn-cs.cs.umn.edu