[comp.binaries.ibm.pc.d] ARC is not compressing NET.EXE

rahardj@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Budi Rahardjo) (04/13/91)

I have just downloaded KA9Q's NET program from wuarchive. It is interesting
to see that the compressed (ARCed) and the actual file is almost the same 
size :

NET-0308 ARC   181175
NET      EXE   181144

Maybe it's better to store the exe version. (save extract time :-)

-- budi

w8sdz@rigel.acs.oakland.edu (Keith Petersen) (04/13/91)

rahardj@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Budi Rahardjo) writes:
>I have just downloaded KA9Q's NET program from wuarchive. It is interesting
>to see that the compressed (ARCed) and the actual file is almost the same 
>size :
>
>NET-0308 ARC   181175
>NET      EXE   181144

That's because Phil Karn has compressed NET.EXE with PKLITE.  I put
NET.EXE into the ARC with the "s" (store as-is) command so that when
you extract the program you will have a CRC check so you can be
assured that it's not corrupted by transmission errors.

If I stored NET.EXE as-is on SIMTEL20 there would be no way for you to
know if it was ok since no CRC check is done by MS-DOS when loading
the file.

Why did I use ARC instead of ZIP?  Because ARC is available on
SIMTEL20's operating system and ZIP isn't.  I would have had to
download the file to my PC, ZIP it and then upload it to SIMTEL20.

If you prefer to get KA9Q directly from the source, it's on
thumper.bellcore.com in the pub/ka9q/nos directory.

Keith
-- 
Keith Petersen
Maintainer of SIMTEL20's MSDOS, MISC & CP/M archives [IP address 26.2.0.74]
Internet: w8sdz@WSMR-SIMTEL20.Army.Mil    or     w8sdz@vela.acs.oakland.edu
Uucp: uunet!umich!vela!w8sdz                          BITNET: w8sdz@OAKLAND

c60b-1eq@web-1h.berkeley.edu (Noam Mendelson) (04/13/91)

In article <1991Apr13.031548.2003@ccu.umanitoba.ca> rahardj@ccu.umanitoba.ca (Budi Rahardjo) writes:
>I have just downloaded KA9Q's NET program from wuarchive. It is interesting
>to see that the compressed (ARCed) and the actual file is almost the same 
>size :
>NET-0308 ARC   181175
>NET      EXE   181144
>Maybe it's better to store the exe version. (save extract time :-)

That's not very odd.  NET.EXE was most likely compressed by an EXE
file compressor, such as PKLITE, DIET, or LZEXE.  Given that ARC is a
very inefficient compression method, it failed to improve on the
compression.  However, even some very efficient compression programs
(LHa, for example) only yield an additional % or two compression on
the compressed EXE file.

-- 
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