daanjj@neabbs.UUCP (DAAN JITTA) (04/03/89)
Big time shortage delayed the whole project, but finally it's ready: today
(April 3 1989) the binaries of Zoo and Fiz (and some docs) will be posted to
the moderator of comp.binaries.atari.st. Sources (probably diffs only, as the
source is BIG) will follow in a few weeks time.
Especially for those of you who don't know what Zoo's possibilities are, I
hereby include the file ARCVSZOO.TXT (this file will also be present in the
Zoo posting).
Decide yourself which one is better, ARC or Zoo- I already made my choice!
A graphical shell, written by Ernst Blok, is now in full beta-test; it will
be the same to Zoo as ARCSH is to ARC. Expect it to be posted to
comp.binaries.atari.st in a couple of weeks time.
<*-*-*-* begin of file ARCVSZOO.TXT *-*-*-*>
ARC versus Zoo
==============
Lots of you out there will wonder what the difference is between
ARC and Zoo, and why they need to consider changing in the first
place.
Well, both ARC and Zoo are archivers: you feed them a list of
files, which they will compress (unless you forbid them to do
that explicitly) and put in one big file, the archive. Another
common point is that both ARC and Zoo sources are freely
available (ARC is shareware, Zoo is Public Domain) and that
versions of Zoo and ARC are available for a lot of different
computers: UNIX boxes, PC's, Amiga's and now ST's.
Let's discuss the most striking differences in some detail:
DIRECTORY SUPPORT
The numbero uno difference: ARC does not support directories,
only plain files. Zoo DOES support directories: when adding
files, Zoo usually also stores the paths as specified in the
list of files to be added. At extraction time, Zoo can be
instructed to place the members of an archive in the directories
they were coming from- a big plus. It's even possible to let Zoo
create all directories needed.
RECOVERING DATA FROM CORRUPTED ARCHIVES
If you have experience with corrupted ARC archives, you will
like this Zoo feature very much! Zoo marks both the beginning of
(file) headers and the beginning of file data with special
tokens, allowing extraction of all (except the corrupted one)
files from the archive. Zoo even has a special utility to aid
the recover operation: a program called "Fiz". Offcourse there
is also a ST version of Fiz.
SPEED
Zoo/ST 2.01 (compiled with Turbo C for the ST v1.0) is on
average +- 40% faster than ARC 5.21 (compiled with Mark Williams
C 3.0.6); some operations are even twice as fast with Zoo (eg
adding new files to an existing archive).
Difference of compilers explaines part of the difference,
entirely different archive organisation explains the rest. See
the source for more info.
COMPRESSION TECHNIQUES
ARC has several compression methods and, after analyzing which
compressing technique will yield the smallest result, usually
decides to "crunch" the file using a so-called Lempel-Ziv
compression scheme. Zoo only has one compression technique (the
same Lempel-Ziv algorithm, seems slightly better implemented).
Zoo doesn't have to analyze (saves time); ARC always uses the
most optimal technique (saves space).
SLICK POSSIBILITIES
Let's name some of them:
- listing the contents of several archives with one command;
- ability to add ASCII comments to every member of an
archive and to the archive as a whole;
- keep multiple generations of your source files in one Zoo
archive;
- Zoo usually refuses to extract a file when the file which
will be overwritten is newer than the file in the archive.
You have to force Zoo to extract the file using a special
comand-line option. Safe!
Many thanks to Rahul Dhesi for writing this excellent program!
Enjoy!
<*-*-*-* end of file ARCVSZOO.TXT *-*-*-*>
Finally, I would like to make my apologies to the following people, who send
me mail- but I never answered 'cause I have to pay quite some money for sending
Usenet stuff:
Rainer Klute, L. J. Dickey, Klamer Schutte,
Richard E. Covert (still want the floppy??),
Don Petcher, Hans-Ch.Eckert, Bernd Kursawe
Sorry guys!
Daan* / . .
__ /
( / / /
(__/ / / (Daan Josephus Jitta)
/ /
__/ __/
old-fashioned: modern:
-------------- -------
Bos en Lommerweg 10 ii UUCP: ...!mcvax!neabbs!daanjj OR daanjj@neabbs
NL-1055 EB Amsterdam Fido: 2:280/1 -- daan jitta
Holland Fax: (+31) 020-763706 -- daan jitta
Tel. (+31) 020-820521 Telex: 12969, NEABS NL, attn: daan jitta