Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-lcc!lll-tis!ames!pasteur!ucbvax!GE-CRD.ARPA!EVERHART%ARISIA.DECnet
From: EVERHART%ARISIA.DECnet@GE-CRD.ARPA
Newsgroups: comp.os.vms
Subject: ARC
Message-ID: <8802250714.AA18420@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU>
Date: 19 Feb 88 16:01:00 GMT
Sender: usenet@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU
Organization: The Internet
Lines: 21


I finally received (thanks!) the ARC part 1 of the vms ARC posting.
I now have tried it...
	ARC does work on files created as archives either BY ARC,
or by other transfer methods that store the files on disk as bitstreams
or their equivalents. For example, XMODEMs typically use fixed
128 byte records in downloads. It (arc) fails badly on archives
created by Kermit in binary mode (even though sweep has no problems
with them and both msdos and Amiga ARC like 'em fine when transferred
to those machines.) I believe ARC must be ignoring the fact that
on variable length records (used by Kermit in binary files) there
are two bytes of record length before each record. Accordingly,
the file must be read by RECORDS, not by BLOCKS, to give the
correct effect.
	Can anyone shed more light on the situation?
	I suppose one can try using vms kermit FILE TYPE FIXED to
work around the problem, though there used to be a problem where
the last record was less than 512 bytes which has led me not to
use fixed filetypes much.
	Is the fix straightforward in C?
Glenn Everhart
Everhart%Arisia.decnet@crd.ge.com