Re: UNIX Compressed Files From A PC

[auryn@rtd.com (Don Yuniskis)]

In article <3996DF0F.B35F1BDC@acm.org>,
Marin D. Condic <mcondic-nospam@acm.org> wrote:
>Don Yuniskis wrote:
>> 
>> Understood.  Sorry this won't "drop-in" without a bit of cobbling...
>> 
>Yeah. That's a problem. The difficulty with cobbling something together
>from someone else's code for a complicated algorithm like this is that
>by the time you've figured out how it works well enough to make the
>modifications you need, you might just as well have rolled your own.

I don't think I'd consider compress(1) "complicated"  :>

As for rolling your own, you then have to test the core of
the algorithm in addition to the "wrappings" you've placed around
it.  At least reusing some existing algorithm gives you the
benefit of *knowing* that it works and has worked for eons...

>You'd be sure to get what you wanted from it and, from what I've seen of
>some of the C sources available to do this, I'd end up with something
>much more readily understood and maintained.

You might want to look at the URL I posted previously.  I imagine you
could wrap it in a suitable preamble and have it up and running
in a day or so -- you might spend a day or more trying to "borrow"
an existing implementation ("package", "class", etc.) only to later
discover that it has limitations on file sizes or some other
unusual "bug" ^H^H^H^H features...

>Unless someone can point me at a package that provides the ops I need, I
>think I'm going to get stuck rolling my own. Pity. :-(

<shrug>  Best of luck!
--don