Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!crdgw1!steinmetz!davidsen
From: davidsen@steinmetz.ge.com (Wm. E. Davidsen Jr)
Newsgroups: comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d
Subject: Today's lzhuf tests
Keywords: lzhuf, compression
Message-ID: <13603@steinmetz.ge.com>
Date: 13 Apr 89 16:59:23 GMT
Reply-To: davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen)
Organization: GE Corp. R & D, Schenectady,NY
Lines: 31


  I have often noted the poor performance of compress on uuencoded
files when sending news. I therefore took an arc file, converted it to
text via uuencode, and applied compress and lzhuf to it. I repeated the
test using the more efficient btoa routine.


  Size  Modify time      File name
  7028   6 Apr 89 13:38  lzhsrc10.arc	The original archive file

  9715  13 Apr 89 11:43  arcuu		arc->uuencode
  7502  13 Apr 89 11:44  arcuu.L	arc->uuencode->lzhuf
  9523  13 Apr 89 11:44  arcuu.Z	arc->uuencode->compress

  8956  13 Apr 89 11:45  arcb2a		arc->btoa
  7472  13 Apr 89 11:46  arcb2a.L	arc->btoa->lzhuf
 10007  13 Apr 89 11:46  arcb2a.Z	arc->btoa->compress

Conclusions:
 1) lzhuf performs better than compress on uuencoded files
 2) lzhuf performs far better than compress on btoa'd files
 3) since most site compress news before sending, uuencode is better
    than the more efficient btoa, in that it doesn't break compress as
    badly.
 4) if lzhuf becomes widly used for news compression btoa becomes
    better for representing binaries, but only a little.

-- 
	bill davidsen		(wedu@crd.GE.COM)
  {uunet | philabs}!steinmetz!crdos1!davidsen
"Stupidity, like virtue, is its own reward" -me