compressed files

[tom rohling]

     I have recently discovered the compress utility on UNIX machines and 
it has turned out to be a wonderful way of keeping down the disk usage and
the file transfer times on our 120GTX.  Now for the question:

     Can a compressed file be accessed through fortran (or C) much in the 
same way that 'zcat' uncompresses the file to std out but leaves the file 
in its compressed state?  i.e. can I read the contents of a compressed file
from a program without having to uncompress it first?  Sort of like zcat 
it into ram where my program can get at it without creating file out 
of it and taking up all that space.

     We have these rather large files (20 Meg uncompressed) we are using 
in some CFD calculations and alot of the time there isn't enough room on 
the disk to uncompress all the files and run the program for a while and 
still leave enough disk space for other users.  Now I know we should just 
forget all this and go buy another disk, but if this can be done it could 
save alot of space for alot of people on other machines where you can't 
'just go buy another disk' (like a Cray where they charge you for the
space you use).

By the way, was my audio suggestion for the Power and Pro series taken 
seriously anywhere?

Tom Rohling
trohling at uceng.uc.edu

"Nothing is impossible, it's just not possible yet"  -Myself