[alt.msdos.programmer] MSDOS common archive/compression progs

rsb5c@watt.acc.Virginia.EDU (Richard S. Bondi) (04/17/91)

At one ftp site, I saw that numerous dos utilities to be ftp'd are 
somehow compressed, either ending in .arc or .zip.  I have also
seen another directory at this ftp site onctaining numerous files
beginning with arc, others with zip, but after I download them,
I can't figure out how to put them together to form ane executable
archiving program.  Going by the Macintosh world (where I am from),
I assume that both the arc and zip programs will be so common that
most readers of this newsgroup will be able to tell me how to 
ftp either the arc ro the zip program, and even tell me what they do!
Thanks very much in advance, RB.

tmurphy%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu (Thomas Murphy) (04/17/91)

In article <1991Apr16.170325.16145@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> rsb5c@watt.acc.Virginia.EDU (Richard S. Bondi) writes:
>At one ftp site, I saw that numerous dos utilities to be ftp'd are 
>somehow compressed, either ending in .arc or .zip.

There are 4 main forms of archives you will run into.  PKarc PkZip
Lharc and Zoo.  You should be able to find utilities for handling
these files on the same locations that you can find the software. Try
looking in the mirrors/msdos/(utilities or archives) section of
wuarchive. Or you can find them on grape.clarkson.edu  The utilities
are generally self unarchiving so you will download them and then for
instance type in pkz110 and it will self explode in the current
directory.  There is a great readme for most of them and they will
also tell you what to do if you just type in the program name.  The
general idea with pkzip is 
pkunzip "filename"  and bingo it will do it all.

murph