Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rpi!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen
From: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.COM (Wm E Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Re: Compressors
Message-ID: <3476@crdos1.crd.ge.COM>
Date: 26 Jun 91 14:27:36 GMT
References: <10002@discus.technion.ac.il> <1991Jun24.065433.10109@ulowell.ulowell.edu>
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.crd.ge.com (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp R&D Center, Schenectady NY
Lines: 45

In article <1991Jun24.065433.10109@ulowell.ulowell.edu> reichert@dino.ulowell.edu (Bastard) writes:
| In article <10002@discus.technion.ac.il> nyh@GAUSS.TECHNION.AC.IL (Nadav Har'El) writes:

| >Therefore, I suggest ftp sites should use the arj format, instead any of the
| >others. I know it is hard work converting all the files to arj, so the sites
| >can make all new archives in the arj format.
| 
| Comprehensive though this experiment was, another usful attribute of various
| compressors is their speed.  I realize that sheer size is definitely the
| _biggest_ (no joke intended) factor, but as an end user, slow decompressions
| grate on my nerves.
| 
| Out of curiosity: I know that some of the tested compressors have options for
| optimizing for size vs. speed.  Were the appropriate options used for these
| tests?

  The big problem with arj is that is works for DOS only. There is a
UNIX version of unzip, arc, and lharc. arj and lha are DOS only for the
moment. The new version of zoo, due out in ten days or so, is portable
to UNIX, VMS, and Amiga as well as DOS.

  I ran tests on all the archivers I could find, and I believe that arj
beats lha by about a percent on average, lha beats new zoo by about a
percent on average, and new zoo beats zip by about 4 percent on average.
No other archiver is in the ballpark, and there's a new version of zip
threatened, I mean promised, which will probably get better compression
and be DOS only again, at least for a while.

  The point is that the author of arj has made a decision not to have a
full function unix version, and I bet there will never be a TOPS-10
version, so I would not expect arj to be chosen as the archiver of
choice.

  I think zip will continue to be used on many sites, while zoo will be
used here because going to a new version won't break all the moderator
and unpack scripts, and will provide somewhat better compression than
zip.

  One of the problems with changing archivers is that while moving the
data is fairly easy, many zoo/zip/arj archives have important
information in the comments, which should be preserved.
-- 
bill davidsen	(davidsen@crdos1.crd.GE.COM -or- uunet!crdgw1!crdos1!davidsen)
  GE Corp R&D Center, Information Systems Operation, tech support group
  Moderator comp.binaries.ibm.pc and 386-users digest.