Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!philapd!ssp2!mbrands@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl
From: mbrands@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (Manfred Brands)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: MKS Toolkit (Was Re: vi-like editor for the IBM PC)
Keywords: Corrections on cpio
Message-ID: <316@ssp2.idca.tds.philips.nl>
Date: 3 Mar 89 07:13:42 GMT
Sender: mbrands@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl
Reply-To: mbrands@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (Manfred Brands)
Organization: Philips Telecommunication and Data Systems, The Netherlands
Lines: 55

In article <7374@killer.DALLAS.TX.US> wnp@killer.Dallas.TX.US (Wolf Paul)
writes:
> [ .... ]
>>cpio

>Very good! It has a (non-standard) option to compress each file before
>adding it to the archive; unfortunately limited by the fact that MKS'
>compress does not support 16-bit compression. Another limitation is 
>that of course, such compressed cpio archives are not directly
>unpackable under UNIX -- you have to unpack them, and then manually
>run each extracted file through uncompress. Maybe this feature could
>be added to afio or pax, or maybe MSK could release the source for
>their cpio to the net? But I'd understand if they didn't :-).

cpio doesn't compress each file, but only the resulting cpio archive. So
you can type:
	uncompress "packed-archive" > "unpacked archive"
which then can be handled by your UNIX cpio. You'll proberly have to use the
-c option to cpio to create ASCII headers.

> [ ... ]

>>uname

>Uses the volume label of the boot disk as the node name; the other options
>return the DOS version/release and the CPU type

The node name used depends on whether you have your machine running in a
network or not. In the first case uname returns the network name of your
machine, if you have set it.

>>compress
>>uncompress
>>zcat

>Unfortunately these handle only 12-bit compression and can't handle
>UNIX-compressed files (usually 16-bit)

zcat has nothing to do with LZ compression. It belongs to the pack/unpack
family which does Huffman coding. zcat can read a packed file and unpacks it
to standard output.

compress and uncompress, can handle up to 14-bit compression.

>>vi

>By itself, worth the price of the Toolkit.

>I have no connection to MKS either, except as a satisfied customer.

Me too.

>Wolf

Manfred Brands.