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From: steve@pnet51.orb.mn.org (Steve Yelvington)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: Re: LHARC available for MINIX!
Message-ID: <2763@orbit.cts.com>
Date: 5 Jul 90 04:16:16 GMT
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Organization: People-Net [pnet51], Minneapolis, MN.
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X-Local-Date: 4 Jul 90 21:16:16 PDT

wayne@csri.toronto.edu (Wayne Hayes) writes:
>In article <781@rossignol.Princeton.EDU> nfs@cs.Princeton.EDU (Norbert Schlenker) writes:
>>LHARC wasn't written with portability in mind.  The archive header
>>format is dependent on byte order within words and on the length of
>>integers.  A PC archive cannot be read on an ST and vice versa,
>>without considerable pulling of teeth.
>
>Have you actually tried this?  I'm sorry but I think you're wrong about
>this.  Yes, the headers weren't written with portability in mind, but
>the UNIX source I'll be posting handles this very well.  I've transfered
>.LZH files from my PC under DOS to a Sun and to Minix and the same archived
>file is readable on all systems.  There was a version out awhile ago that
>I also ported and had to write my own INTEL <-> Motorola transfer
>functions, but this version is by the original author of LHARC and much
>cleaner.
 
The problem is that LHARC has been ported between Intel and Motorola
platforms probably eight or nine times, and at least half of the people
doing the port did not know what the hades they were doing.
 
I have several alleged LHARC programs for the ST under TOS. None is fully
compatible with any other. My most recent adventure with LHARC produced
file dates that were so screwed up that they actually crashed the shell
I was using when I tried to list a directory. 
 
It ain't worth the grief.

---
 steve@thelake.mn.org