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From: paul@cgh.UUCP
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: nice if arc/pkarc knew about subdirectories
Message-ID: <691@cgh.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 31-Oct-87 21:00:45 EST
Article-I.D.: cgh.691
Posted: Sat Oct 31 21:00:45 1987
Date-Received: Wed, 4-Nov-87 19:49:27 EST
References: <4290@cit-vax.Caltech.Edu> <837@plx.UUCP> <258@grinch.grinch.UUCP>
Reply-To: paul@cgh.UUCP (Paul Homchick)
Organization: Chimitt Gilman Homchick, Radnor, PA
Lines: 26

In article <258@grinch.grinch.UUCP> luis@grinch.UUCP (Luis Chanu) writes:

>    Is Zoo ARC/PKARC compatible?  What are it's advantages?  and for that
>matter, dis-advantages?   Any information would be greatly appriciated...

The advantage part is easy, I'll have to think a bit about the disadvantages.

Zoo is free, with souce code provided.  It will compile on VMS, Unix -- both
Sys V and BSD, MS-DOS and Amiga.  Zoo files created on any of these systems
can be moved to any of the other systems on the list.  As mentioned, zoo will
store a complete pathname, and it can be made to extract files either by
their filename only, or you can use the entire pathname to create a directory
tree.  It is not pkarc/arc compatible, but this is an advantage as no one
ever wondered why his copy of ZOO would not extract files from SQUASHED.ZOO.
You can add comments to the internal zoo directory, file by file.  If you can
find a 'find' program, you can pipe the file list to be stored to zoo via
standard input.  The standard zoo compression scheme is about the same as
that of the PKARC 'squashing,' so file sizes are similar.  It has a directory
list format that shows many files per line, like 'ls'.  It has error recovery
programs that allow for file extraction from a damaged zoo file.

As for disadvantages?  You have to be willing to change to a new standard
to get these benefits.  That's the only one I can think of.
-- 
Paul Homchick                     {allegra | ihnp4 | rutgers} !cbmvax!cgh!paul
Chimitt Gilman Homchick, Inc.; One Radnor Station, Suite 300; Radnor, PA 19087