dsb@Rational.COM (David S. Bakin) (03/09/89)
What are the advantages/disadvantages of PAK v. PKZIP? I know that PKZIP is the follow-on to PKARC in the ARC wars, but that's all. [If everybody but me already knows the answer to this, I'm sorry for disturbing you. (But I still want to know!)] -- Dave ---------------------------------------------------------- Dave Bakin (408) 496-3600 c/o Rational; 3320 Scott Blvd.; Santa Clara, CA 95054-3197 Internet: dsb@rational.com Uucp: ...!uunet!igor!dsb
tbetz@dasys1.UUCP (Tom Betz) (03/12/89)
Quoth dsb@Rational.COM (David S. Bakin) in <531@igor.Rational.COM>: |What are the advantages/disadvantages of PAK v. PKZIP? I know that |PKZIP is the follow-on to PKARC in the ARC wars, but that's all. | |[If everybody but me already knows the answer to this, I'm sorry for |disturbing you. (But I still want to know!)] |-- Dave I presume you are talking about Nogate's PAK, and not the short-lived PKPAK, successor to PKARC. Based on some tens of comparison reports and some personal diddling about with both of them: PAK uses a lot of ROM routines, making its performance vary widely depending on whose ROM your machine uses, where PKZIP is entirely self-contained. In the main, PKZIP is both faster (in its default -ea2 -eb2 settings) than PAK to compress and creates smaller archives than PAK. With PKZIP set for its maximum compression (-ea2 -eb4 sems to be the consensus) it is about the same speed as PAK in its default (and only) settings, and manages between 5% and 10% more compression than PAK. However, with certain ROMs, PAK will be faster than PKZIP, and with certain others, it will be twice as slow. PKUNZIP, on the other hand, is >always< faster than PAK's extraction mode. Also, PKZIP has the capability to zip and unzip entire directory trees (using -r -p switches) and PKZIP to restore them (using -d switch), though the early release (0.90) has demonstrated the tendency to confuse absolute and relative paths sometimes, particularly on network versions of DOS. Katz is working to fix this, as it seems to have something to do with non-standard use of attribute bytes... release 1.00 will mask out all non-standard attribute bytes. Also, NoGate has expressed no intention of porting PAK to any other operating systems, while Katz is actively working to see ZIP ported to Amiga, Mac, Apple 8-bit, Unix, and Vax/VMS. -- "Still I sing bonny boys, bonny mad boys, | Tom Betz, 114 Woodworth Bedlam boys are bonny, | Yonkers, NY 10701-2509 For they all go bare, and they live by the air, | (914) 375-1510 And they want nor drink nor money." - Steeleye Span | tbetz@dasys1.UUCP