Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!bloom-beacon!mit-eddie!ll-xn!ames!pasteur!agate!web7f.berkeley.edu!laba-5ac
From: laba-5ac@web7f.berkeley.edu (Erik Talvola)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: Comparison of compaction routines
Message-ID: <9331@agate.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: 28 Apr 88 04:08:57 GMT
References: <483@csccat.UUCP> <10564@steinmetz.ge.com> <669@omen.UUCP>
Sender: usenet@agate.BERKELEY.EDU
Reply-To: laba-5ac@widow.berkeley.edu.UUCP (Erik Talvola)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
Lines: 40


  Here is a response to the numerous postings about my original comparison
of the compression programs on the PC.  First - about the compress program.
This program was obtained from SIMTEL20.ARPA as the file COMPRESS16.ARC which
is in PD1:<MSDOS.SQ-USQ> directory.  I used their executable file.  Maybe
this used hideous source code or a hideous C compiler - I just ran the
program as it was and it came out very slow.  Second - about the points
I stressed.  One of the first replies claimed that Compress seemed like
the winner because it compressed the best.  I still disagree - I think a
balance between ease of use and compression rate should be the important
factor.  If a program gets even 5% better compression, but takes 5 times
as long to run, then it is not convenient to use.  PKARC seemed to be
the best - it generated very small compressed files and ran the quickest.

  Also, one user noted that perhaps compression should not be used at
all in transfering files, as compression is already used automatically
by UseNET, and compressing already compressed files actually increases
the size.  I have no information on this, so if someone could confirm
this, I would appreciate it.  However, since the files still have to
be UUencoded (or processed with something to convert binary to ASCII),
I am not sure whether this is still valid.  Perhaps compression a UUencoded
compressed file works well, or not.  I repeat - I have little knowledge
of the UseNET network.  

  Finally, I do not have benchmarks for Unix versions of the same 
compress files.  When I get this information, I will pass it along
also.  In my opinion, Zoo or a Squashing Arc (when a Sys V version
comes along) seems to be the way to go, with Zoo being better (maybe)
in that it handles more things, such as saving directory structures,
even though it appears to be a bit slower than PKARC on MS-DOS.  

  Well, this should provide some new material for people to flame about.
I don't know when an updated version of my test will be released, but
I will post it when it does.

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Erik Talvola          laba-5ac@widow.berkeley.edu

"...death is an acquired trait." -- Woody Allen
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