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From: igp@camcon.co.uk (Ian Phillipps)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc
Subject: Re: MKS Toolkit (Was Re: vi-like editor for the IBM PC)
Keywords: Corrections on cpio
Message-ID: <2452@titan.camcon.co.uk>
Date: 9 Mar 89 17:25:56 GMT
References: <316@ssp2.idca.tds.philips.nl>
Organization: Cambridge Consultants Ltd., Cambridge, UK
Lines: 31

mbrands@idca.tds.PHILIPS.nl (Manfred Brands) writes:

>>>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.

Not so: this is from Sun Release 4.0:

COMPRESS(1)              USER COMMANDS                COMPRESS(1)

NAME
     compress, uncompress,  zcat  -  compress  or  expand  files,
	  display expanded contents

     zcat produces uncompressed output on  the  standard  output,
	  but leaves the compressed .Z file intact.

I.e. zcat most certainly DOES do LZ decoding (at least on Suns).
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