Re: ARCHIVES

Jeff:

As far as I can see, .tar and .gzip are both less popular, "old" forms of
archiving files. [Big blank faced shrug??--With my mind, I do "blank" rather
well.]

Used--one assumes--by those less fortunate who can not afford the free
WinZip--or--like in this case, they are using one of those "other" operating
systems. Seriously, I believe both are old Unix formats.
[Don't throw that rock--I'm only kidding!!)

BTW--I always though ZIP file programs were also available for both Unix and
Linux??  Remember the "Win" in WinZip just means it is a Windows program.
But--There is nothing "Windows" about ZIP files. For example, they work in
DOS and on the MAC operating system just fine.

Here is a quote from the Help Files of WinZip about TAR and other
"archiving" files:

QUOTE--
What is an Archive?

Archives are files that contain other files.  Typically the files in an
archive are compressed.  Archives usually have file names ending with ZIP,
LZH, ARJ, or ARC, depending on how they were created.  Archives make it easy
to group files and make transporting and copying these files faster.

Typical Uses for Archives:

� Most files available in "file areas" on bulletin boards and electronic
services like CompuServe and the Internet are distributed as archives.  Two
benefits of using archives for electronic file distribution are that only
one file transfer operation ("download") is required to obtain all related
files, and file transfer time is minimized because the files in an archive
are compressed.  See the sections titled Install/Try/Uninstall Feature and
CheckOut Feature for information about WinZip features particularly suited
for working with downloaded files.

� It is often useful to send a group of related files to an associate.
Rather than distributing individual files it is often easier to distribute
the files as an archive to benefit from the file grouping and compression.

� Some files are important but not used often.  To save disk space simply
compress these files into an archive when they are not used, and decompress
them only when needed.

TAR, Z, GZ, TAZ, and TGZ files are often found on Unix-based Internet sites.
The relationship between these file types is less straightforward than the
aforementioned file formats.  The important thing to remember is that WinZip
handles all these formats the same way as Zip files, so you don't need to
know the details.

Here is more information on these formats:  TAR stands for "Tape ARchive".
This is an old file format and does not provide compression; it is used only
to group files.  Z files are compressed with gzip or the older Unix
"compress" program.  GZ files are gzip files.  Z and GZ files cannot contain
multiple files.  TAZ and TGZ files are TAR files compressed in "Z" or "GZ"
format.  Since almost all new archives are created in Zip format WinZip does
not provide facilities to add to or create files in these formats (however,
all other WinZip functions are supported).  WinZip does not require external
programs when working with files in these formats.
UNQUOTE

Also, in addition to these, there are dozens more floating about and every
one of them has their champions who seem to delight in driving--
those of us who wish to standardize--nutty bananas.

Best wishes
Ted Temer
Temercraft Designs Redding, CA
temer(at)c-zone.net
www.temercraft.com/
www.newsredding.com/

> Hi Folks:
>
> It was written:
>
> > It's shareware (1.6M) and can archive Windows 95/98, 2000, NT files in
tar
> or
> > gzip format.
>
> This is the second time in as many days that I've come across these
terms -
> .tar and .gzip. Are these unique to Linux?
>
> - Jeff Kopito
>

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