Problem with compress

[Neil Rickert]

In article <1991May15.173739.29874 at mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert at mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
> Am I alone in thinking that the way compress handles symlinks is just fine.
>What I don't like is the way it handles hard links.  What would be wrong with

 Since I wrote that I have received several email messages, either agreeing
or at least partially agreeing.

 One respondent did defend the current handling of hard links, suggesting that
you shouldn't want to keep both a compressed and an uncompressed version.  In
my view, that misses the point.  The software shouldn't make that decision
for me - I should be able to make it myself.

 What I would often like to be able to do is:

	mkdir temp
	ln *.Z temp
	cd temp
	uncompress *.Z
	   --------- browse through the uncompressed files -------------
	cd ..
	rm -rf temp

 The current handling of hard links makes this a pain, although fortunately
we have symlinks, so there is a work around.

 ----

 Finally, apologies to comp.compression.  I guess this discussion doesn't
really belong there.  It doesn't really belong in comp.sources.bugs either,
although that is how I came upon it.  Shortly after voting for
comp.compression, I found myself unsubscribing due to the high noise level.
And here I am contributing noise.

-- 
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  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert at cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940