frotz@drivax.UUCP (Frotz) (11/16/88)
In article <2486@m2-net.UUCP> mju@m-net.UUCP (Marc Unangst) writes: >PKARC v3.5 and up has file and archive comments, too. One of the >prime reasons that ZOO will probably never gain wide acceptance >is the fact that it isn't backward-compatable with PKARC. This could be considered a feature;-) in that the file format has nothing to do with the arc-wars. I believe that the functional similarity (in novice) mode was intentional. >People >have to convert all their archives to ZOO. For a BBS with several >megabytes of files, this could take a very long while. Perhaps >if a person wrote a program to automatically re-pack all of a >BBS's files with ZOO, it would help the changeover. The sysop >would take the board down for a day, run ARC2ZOO, and then >put it back up. The executables release of zoo comes with the following zoo utilities: ATOZ.EXE: Converts >>>ANY<<< other non-zoo file format to zoo as long as you have an archiver, zoo and atoz. You specify what the source archive is, what executable unarcs it, whether or not to test the zoo archive after it is built and so forth. If only some of the other arc-warriors were as nice;-) I routinely convert all non-zoo archives to zoo with atoz in very short order. STUFF.EXE: Generates a list of files that match a search criterion. This seems to be a unix-find work-alike for generating lists of files to be zoo-ed. (I haven't used this because I use to Metaware's Find for this and everything else. Why use one more tool;-) Turbo-C Source is available. BOOZ.EXE: This is the basic zoo extractor. This comes with source so that developers can create zoo-aware utilities. This is not needed if you have zoo. FIZ.EXE: This is handy if you have moved a zoo archive onto a floppy that develops "lost" clusters. There should be few other reasons to use this program, BUT IT IS SURE NICE TO HAVE AROUND. Thanks Rahul! LOOZ.EXE: This is a fancy zoo extractor. It has the ability to load an zoo-ed executable into memory and on top of itself. This is nice because it allows users to execute programs from an archive without creating a temporary file on disk. It also minimizes the memory impact of using looz. Again, this program is not necessary if you have zoo. ZOO.EXE: If I understand current events correctly, this will remain the name of Rahul's Zoo archiver (with minor restrictions). I may be mistaken about the name of the "Free ZOO" program, but I think it is called FREEZOO.EXE. ZOO.EXE is the only program that can create archives ("Free ZOO" is considered to be ZOO here since there are only supposed to be minor differences in features). ZOO.EXE can create archives, extract archives, list archives, add comments, mark as deleted, unmark as deleted, pack (meaning "pack zoo by removing all files marked as deleted"), and a few other features that I don't use enough to remember;-). BILF.EXE: THIS IS A VMS PROGRAM ONLY! It is only needed when converting slimy (sorry prejudices showing...tuck, tuck...there) file formats so that kermit can get zoo archives onto and off of VMS machines. This program is only needed if you are using zoo on a VMS machine and move zoo archives to non-VMS machines. Apologies to the net for this long windedness. Thanks to Rahul Dhesi for all of his great work on zoo and as moderator. --Frotz @Digital Research, Incorporated amdahl!drivax!frotz 70 Garden Court, B15 (408) 649-3896 Monterey, California 93940 Ask for John Fa'atuai