Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!ucsd!ames!lll-winken!uunet!tektronix!tekcrl!tekgvs!keithe
From: keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: My 2cents on Zoo vs. ARC
Message-ID: <4829@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM>
Date: 25 Mar 89 01:08:24 GMT
References: <544@babbage.acc.virginia.edu> <1290@hounx.ATT.COM> <367@nbires.nbi.com>
Reply-To: keithe@tekgvs.LABS.TEK.COM (Keith Ericson)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton,  OR.
Lines: 28


I squirrel away almost any and every program or executable that looks
like it might even have a chance of being interesting, to me or to
someone in my (a) department; (b), company; or (c) my acquaintences.  I
simply have to use and archiver to keep the stuff to a reasonable size.

When something comes in over USENET I save the uuencoded parts away in
it's own subdirectory. (I use rn running on a VAX 11/785, BSD 4.3; I use
my 386AT as a terminal using Tom Almy's minimalist terminal emulator
that doesn't drop the lines on the RS-232 port so when I start it up
again I'm still connected to the VAX).

Once the parts are all there I kill the terminal simulator, and, using
PC-NFS and its remote file system capability, I cd (in DOS, now) to the
subdirectory with the newly-arrived programs and, using Richard Marks
_excellent_ program, uudecode the pieces, resulting in a .arc file. I
then use the atoz program (Anything-TO-Zoo) and convert the ARC file
to a ZOO file.

Before I discard the ARC file I always check to see what the sizes of
the the ARC and the ZOO files; the ZOO file is not _always_ the larger,
and it is often smaller.  And the difference in sizes is almost NEVER
even a DOS cluster's worth.  Based on this ad hoc comparison between
ARC and ZOO I've concluded that the resultant file size is not an issue.

I haven't tried Phil Katz's pak program.  Mostly inertia, probably.

kEITHe