Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!think.com!spool.mu.edu!uunet!looking!brad
From: brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton)
Newsgroups: comp.compression
Subject: Re: Compressing more then one file in one compression-run ?
Message-ID: <1991May29.012444.23700@looking.on.ca>
Date: 29 May 91 01:24:44 GMT
Article-I.D.: looking.1991May29.012444.23700
References: <5655@mhres.mh.nl> <49574@ut-emx.uucp>
Organization: Looking Glass Software Ltd.
Lines: 20

Well, my archiver does exactly what was suggested, and my answer to the
deletion problem was simple -- don't do it.

In fact, these days, with disk space as cheap as it is, I suspect that
fewer and fewer people are using archivers in the old ARC fashion -- keeping
the only online copy of a file in the archive, and doing inserts, deletes
and updates.

These days the prime use of this is file transportation, not file storage.
(Other than storage for transportation).   As such you build the archive
as needed.

Object libraries are an exception to this.  They, of course, are not
compressed, though they could be.  There's just not much call for it.

And in the case of a file-combing mode (which is what people get when they
do a tar and then compress) you do this to get maximal compression, and
sometimes you sacrifice some things for maximal compression.
-- 
Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473