Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uwm.edu!lakesys!mikes
From: mikes@lakesys.lakesys.com (Mike Shawaluk)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: arc, Computer Language magazine
Message-ID: <1858@lakesys.lakesys.com>
Date: 10 Apr 90 12:34:28 GMT
References: <127@tots.UUCP>
Reply-To: mikes@lakesys.UUCP (Mike Shawaluk)
Organization: Lake Systems - Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Lines: 31

In article <127@tots.UUCP> tep@tots.UUCP (Tom Perrine) writes:
>Help! I have downloaded a file "clfeb90.arc" from several different
>places, and I can't find a version of ARC that will get the file I
>want.
> ...
>I want to port this to sit on top of the native Amiga memory
>allocation stuff, BUT the latest version of arc I can find can't
>unpack this archive. It suggests that I need a newer version of arc.
>The arc I have appears to be either 0.23, .023 or 23, depending on
>which part of the program you look at.

This message most likely indicates that the file was produced by PKXARC,
which utilized a compression algorithm called Squashing, which isn't
supported by any version of ARC for the Amiga.  However, PKWARE (the authors
of PKXARC) created a program called PKAX for the Amiga, which _will_ extract
this type of file (and much faster than ARC 0.23, BTW).

As an aside, it occurs to me that the program PKAX, which was PKWARE's first
offering for the Amiga, is a CLI-based archive extraction program!  It's
interesting that this program was never strongly supported by Amiga users (I
have talked to Phil Katz about the number of contributions he received for
this program, which he said were "a half dozen or so").  Granted, this
program only did 1/2 of the job, but considering that most users spend more
time taking apart archives that they have downloaded vs. putting new ones
together, it's probably the more highly used part.
  - Mike
-- 
   - Mike Shawaluk             
"Rarely have we seen a mailer  ->  DOMAIN: mikes@lakesys.lakesys.com 
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