ESIX compress(1) broken (was: Re: Using Interactive TPWB...)

[John Temples]

In article <1991Jan6.225758.27472 at portia.Stanford.EDU> fangchin at elaine10.stanford.edu (Chin Fang) writes:
>So now I use GNU compress/uncompress/zcat and junked ESIX' originals.

When I first installed B news on my ESIX system several months ago, I
copied /usr/bin/compress to /usr/lib/news, rather than compiling the
compress that came with news software.  Compressed news batches
didn't work.  It turns out that "compress -d", which is used by news
software to uncompress batches, does not work with the ESIX-supplied
compress.  "compress -d < file.Z" just echoes file.Z to the standard
output.  This becomes even more of a problem when installing C news,
since it runs compress from the path, rather than from /usr/lib/news.
So, I renamed /usr/bin/compress to ocompress, and let C news find a
working compress in my local/bin directory.  But I got burned again
when I went to install the X Window software.  It's compressed, and
expects to find /usr/bin/compress to install, and you don't get any
errors until all of the disks have been copied in...
-- 
John W. Temples -- john at jwt.UUCP (uunet!jwt!john)