Backups using compress

[Chip Salzenberg]

According to gwyn at smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn):
>What most people do is to compress the archive, not the individual
>files; that also should generally be more compact.
>In this method you can simply pipe the archive through "compress".

I would think twice before using this method for backups.  LZW
compression (i.e. /usr/bin/compress), like most kinds of compression,
is _extremely_ unforgiving of trashed data.  If you lose ONE BYTE, the
rest of the archive will probably be lost permanently.
-- 
Chip Salzenberg at Teltronics/TCT     <chip at tct.uucp>, <uunet!pdn!tct!chip>
    "I've been cranky ever since my comp.unix.wizards was removed
         by that evil Chip Salzenberg."   -- John F. Haugh II