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From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Arc vs compress
Message-ID: <343@gethen.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 14-Nov-87 20:51:28 EST
Article-I.D.: gethen.343
Posted: Sat Nov 14 20:51:28 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 16-Nov-87 04:42:48 EST
References: <696@rlgvax.UUCP> <7406@eddie.MIT.EDU>
Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Organization: Sci-Fido - Unix in Oakland
Lines: 21
Keywords: Why arc?

In article <7406@eddie.MIT.EDU> jbs@eddie.MIT.EDU (Jeff Siegal) writes:
>ARC is actually better than a simple compression program because it
>tries several compression schemes and uses the one which results in
>the smallest file (sometimes this is the original file!).

While it is true that ARC chooses the 'best' compression method, this
is somewhat of a red herring.  The Unix 'compress' utility, using
16-bit Lempel-Zev compression, significantly outperforms ARC's 12-bit
(or PKARC's 13-bit) compression on anything other than very small files,
where the gain isn't significant, anyway.  The only thing that ARC offers
that compress does not is the ability to pack several files into one
large file, which is a matter mostly of convenience, not of efficiency.

BTW - the 'compress' utility is available for MS-DOS.  I use it as often
as I do ARC.

-- 
----------------
Michael J. Farren      "... if the church put in half the time on covetousness
unisoft!gethen!farren   that it does on lust, this would be a better world ..."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.arpa             Garrison Keillor, "Lake Wobegon Days"