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From: honp9@menudo.uh.edu (Jason L. Tibbitts III)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc
Subject: Re: .Z files
Keywords: help
Message-ID: <1991Mar19.045227.6309@menudo.uh.edu>
Date: 19 Mar 91 04:52:27 GMT
References: <1158@sppy00.UUCP> <1210@caslon.cs.arizona.edu>
Organization: Blob Shop Programmers
Lines: 26

In article <1210@caslon.cs.arizona.edu> dave@cs.arizona.edu (Dave Schaumann) writes:
>In article <1158@sppy00.UUCP> cjs@sppy00.UUCP (SCHALLER CHRIS) writes:
>> I have done alot of downloading with the amiga, but have never
>> encountered a compressed file with the .Z at the end.
>Files ending with .Z were compressed with a utility called "compress".
>Usually, you can uncompress by renaming the same executable as "uncompress".

Please note that the compress utility takes a monstrous amount of memory
to do its thing.  Most files that are compressed on Unix systems (where
memory is less of a concern) are compressed using the maximum compression
setting (16 bits).  Uncompressing these files is a no-go on a 512K Amiga,
and you need a relatively clean 1M system (kill off utiities or ctrl-D
out of the startup-sequence) to get enough contiguous RAM.

Compress can be told to use less efficient algorithms that require less
memory to unpack, but this must be chosen at compression time.

Read the man pages for more info.

>Dave Schaumann | dave@cs.arizona.edu | Short .sig's rule!

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