Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!helios.ee.lbl.gov!pasteur!ames!umd5!purdue!i.cc.purdue.edu!j.cc.purdue.edu!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uiucdcsp!gillies
From: gillies@uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: some (should-be) ground-rules f
Message-ID: <76000213@uiucdcsp>
Date: 9 Jun 88 16:08:00 GMT
References: <643@vsi1.UUCP>
Lines: 14
Nf-ID: #R:vsi1.UUCP:643:uiucdcsp:76000213:000:623
Nf-From: uiucdcsp.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Jun  9 11:08:00 1988


I recently became interested in writing a compression utility.

But when I benchmarked compress on some digital pictures, I found that
stuffit's LZW algorithm is much more efficient than compress's
algorithm.  I'm not sure compress is all that great a program.  If you
look at the source code, it's been hacked dozens of times by different
authors at different sites.  Data compression methods are heuristics,
and sometimes too many cooks can spoil the pot.

So I'm not voting for making compress a standard.  I believe stuffit
is better.

Don Gillies {ihnp4!uiucdcs!gillies} U of Illinois
            {gillies@cs.uiuc.edu}