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From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.compression
Subject: Re: Self Extracting Files
Message-ID: <4516.Jun1501.51.0991@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 15 Jun 91 01:51:09 GMT
References: <309pollarda@physc1.byu.edu>
Organization: IR
Lines: 19

What does any of this have to do with comp.compression? Sounds like IBM
programming group fodder.

In article <309pollarda@physc1.byu.edu> pollarda@physc1.byu.edu writes:
> What tells the computer to stop loading in the file as machine code
> and handle the rest as data?

It just loads in the whole thing and jumps to a spot near the beginning.
Then both the code and the data are in memory. The code uncompresses the
data, then jumps to the beginning of the newly uncompressed program.

> Some programs have something embeded in them so that if you "type"
> them, they will display the program name and the material will stop
> scrolling on the screen and the DOS prompt will appear again.

The DOS programs interpret ^Z as an end-of-file marker. They'll stop
when they hit ^Z in a file, even if there's more data past that.

---Dan