[comp.sys.ibm.pc] The Compression Wars.

a563@mindlink.UUCP (Dave Kirsch) (08/27/89)

Taking a look at the compression war:

COMPRESSION COMPARISON
----------------------

Percentages are the size of the file compared to the orginal size,
i.e. if 37% is listed, the file is 37% the size OF the orginal.
Time in seconds, Size in bytes.

Test done on file TELIX.DOC (text, size: 170,821)

                              normal   -ex
      PKPAK    PAK     PAK    PKZIP   PKZIP   LHARC    ZOO    PKZIP
      V3.61   V1.00   V2.00   V0.92   V0.92   V1.13   V2.01   V1.01

Time   3.407   8.462  14.451   3.407  13.462  21.923   6.923 12.637

Size  63,772  56,227  51,474  58,582  58,582  54,399  64,538 50,423
      37.33%  32.92%  30.13%  34.29%  34.29%  31.85%  37.78% 29.52%

I find it very interesting that PKZIP 0.92 did the same ammount of
compression on both normal and EXtended compression (I double checked
and did it again to make sure, it's true).
------------------------------------------------------------------- --

Test done on file TELIX.EXE (binary, size: 279,488)

                              normal   -ex
      PKPAK    PAK     PAK    PKZIP   PKZIP   LHARC    ZOO    PKZIP
      V3.61   V1.00   V2.00   V0.92   V0.92   V1.13   V2.01   V1.01

Time   5.659  18.736  21.429   6.758  14.935  27.747  14.231 17.033

Size 182,392 166,776 132,261 180,413 145,410 135,327 182,189 134,453
      65.26%  59.67%  47.32%  64.55%  52.03%  48.42%  65.19% 48.11%

It looks like PKPAK wins in the speed category, though it produces the
least ammount of compression.  In text files, PKZIP 1.01 wins with
producing the smallest file, just behind PAK 2.00.  But in the binary
file, PAK 2.00 just beats PKZIP 1.01 by 2K.

All tests were done on a 25MHz 80386 running DOS 3.3, no RAM Cache. Drive
was a 330MB Maxtor hard drive at 16 millesecond access time.  All tests
were run 3 times then averaged.  The drive was not chached.  The only TSR
in memory was SideKick (so I could record the results).

Dave Kirsch -- a563@mindlink.UUCP