schung@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Stephen the Greatest) (01/22/88)
Hi, fellow NetLanders, I have a question (as usual). I was on vacation for a while so I missed some software. I tried downloading them from uunet.uu.net anonymously, but most of the files are already compressed into .Z files. I tried to uncompress them here but then all of them gave me junk. Sometimes some uncompresses will never stop, so I end up with a bunch of 10M files. Is there anything wrong with uncompress? I tried it on different machines with the same results. I think uncompress refuses to uncompress any compressed files with a different version number, but I may be wrong. I know I have missed something here. Please help! - Stephen
jbatson@brazil.bbn.com (Jay Batson) (01/23/88)
In article <304@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> schung@cory.Berkeley.EDU (Stephen the Greatest) writes: > I tried > downloading (some software) from uunet.uu.net anonymously, but most of the > files are already compressed into .Z files. I tried to uncompress > them here but then all of them gave me junk. Sometimes some > uncompresses will never stop, so I end up with a bunch of 10M files. > > Is there anything wrong with uncompress? When you use ftp to download files, ftp uses a default "representation type" of "network ASCII". If you download files which have been "compress"ed, the contents of the file will not arrive as it started, which is, of course correct. Given this, uncompress suffers from "GIGO". You need to be sure to set your "representation type" to "image" (just type "binary" at the ftp prompt) before you transfer files. Sorry, you'll have to download the files you obtained again. Jay Batson UUCP: ...!harvard!bbn.com!jbatson 617-873-4119 DOMAIN: jbatson@bbn.com "Parallel processing can be fun!"
rick@seismo.CSS.GOV (Rick Adams) (01/23/88)
Compressed files are binary files. If you want to ftp binary files, you must specify the "binary" option to ftp. ---rick
gandalf@russell.STANFORD.EDU (Juergen Wagner) (01/23/88)
In article <304@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> schung@cory.Berkeley.EDU writes: > ... I tried > downloading them from uunet.uu.net anonymously, but most of the > files are already compressed into .Z files. I tried to uncompress > them here but then all of them gave me junk. Sometimes some > uncompresses will never stop, so I end up with a bunch of 10M files. Well, I reckon you just transferred the files from uunet.uu.net as text files, i.e. all the non-printing control characters in the files are very likely to have changed during the transfer. To ftp files which are not pure text use the "binary" transfer mode. I guess, your uncompress will be much happier eating these files. Try! -- Juergen Wagner, gandalf@Russell.Stanford.edu Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI), Stanford CA