Problem with compress

[Mark Adler]

In article <26085:May1416:52:3491 at kramden.acf.nyu.edu> brnstnd at kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein) writes:
>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.

I agree completely.  That's what tar is for.  If you do something like:

     tar covf - foo | compress -c > foo.tar.Z

any symbolic links in the directory foo will be stored as such, and
hard links will only be stored once.

Despite my agreement though, I'm involved in writing a Zip program for
Unix, which tries to cover the functions of tar and compress, and do
them better.   Hypocrisy makes life easier.  :-)

Mark Adler
madler at pooh.caltech.edu