Problem with compress

[Dan Bernstein]

(I'm not sure whether this is appropriate for comp.compression.)

In article <1991May14.044431.23932 at sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM> kent at sparky.IMD.Sterling.COM (Kent Landfield) writes:
> I received an interesting question today, one I had never really considered.
> "How does compress deal with symbolic links ?"

compress isn't a BSD program. It uses stat(), and its behavior makes
perfect sense.

I think compressors should ignore problems like this. They shouldn't
open files, they shouldn't close files, they shouldn't do anything but
read data and write compressed data. This also makes them more portable.
A separate, system-dependent program can do the dirty work.

---Dan