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Combuster wrote:Also, RAR files stink</troll>

Hobbes wrote:Not to start a flame war (I rarely use RAR at all) but I would like to know what makes you say that.

.zip is the "lingua franca" of archives. .tar.gz, tar.bz2 and .7z are the runner-ups. Anything else is unwieldly, IMHO.

Solar wrote:@ turdus:

It's not simply a question of "who was first". It's a factor of "what's best supported" and "what is the least hassle to handle". ZIP is like FAT32 - no-one really likes it, but if you want to play it safe and go for maximum compatibility, there's nothing better.

Additionally, ZIP archives can be "browsed" just like another folder. TAR archives don't allow that.

@brain:

I cannot quite fathom where you see any similarities in use or purpose between an archive and an ISO file. Apples and oranges. About the only thing comparable is an ISO file and an uncompressed TAR - when was the last time you've seen one of those?

Anyways, I don't know which thread turdus picked that Combuster quote from, and I was talking about archivers in general. While an ISO image file is acceptable for distributing an OS in compiled form, you wouldn't use it for a source tree, your master thesis, or your picture collection, would you?

Solar wrote:It's a factor of "what's best supported"

and "what is the least hassle to handle". ZIP is like FAT32 - no-one really likes it, but if you want to play it safe and go for maximum compatibility, there's nothing better.

Additionally, ZIP archives can be "browsed" just like another folder. TAR archives don't allow that.

turdus wrote:Well, pkzip is officially not supported on unices, it's eol.

As for compatiblity it's approval for being a Standard was denied.

If you really want to go for maximum compatiblity, you should choose portable archive...

With zip you'll never archive your root linux partition without loss of information for example.

Additionally, ZIP archives can be "browsed" just like another folder. TAR archives don't allow that.

Don't know what you're talking about. No such limitation of the format itself.

For example I work with mainframes and unices for living, there nobody uses zip. Never ever.

Hobbes wrote:I would like to know what makes you say that.

I also wouldn't require maximum ease of portability from such an archive, now would I?

But if you are packing a couple of files so that some unknown person of unknown skill on some unknown platform shall have the minimum amount of hassle in unpacking it

ZIP is random access (as it compresses each file individually), tar is sequential access (and you have to read the whole archive to even give a table of contents). If you "browse" them frequently, as you claim, you should have noticed that. Well, it doesn't matter for small archives on fast machines, I grant you that much...

But if you are packing a couple of files so that some unknown person of unknown skill on some unknown platform shall have the minimum amount of hassle in unpacking it, ZIP is #1, with .tar.gz coming at #2 and .tar.bz2 a distant #3.

...no other archive format has a bigger installed support base...

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <string.h>
#include <unistd.h>
#include <zlib.h>

int main(int argc,char** argv)
{
    gzFile *f;
    char blk[512];
    if(argc<2) {  printf("%s <tar file>\n",argv[0]); exit(0); }

    f=gzopen(argv[1],"r");
    if(f==NULL) {  printf("Auch.\n"); exit(1); }

    while(gzread(f,&blk,512)!=0){
        char *data;
        int size,blksize;
        if(blk[156]!='0') continue; //normal file?
        sscanf(blk+124,"%o",&size);
        blksize=((size/512)*512)+(size&0x1ff?512:0);
        printf("%8d bytes %6d blks %s\n",size,blksize/512,blk);
        data=malloc(blksize);  gzread(f,data,blksize); data[size]=0;
        //do things with data
        free(data);
    }
    gzclose(f);
}

turdus wrote:@Solar: about utility and file format: if you don't have the utility you cannot deal with the format, am I right?

I also wouldn't require maximum ease of portability from such an archive, now would I?

But if you are packing a couple of files so that some unknown person of unknown skill on some unknown platform shall have the minimum amount of hassle in unpacking it

Hmm, seems contradiction.

Just because you have to read the whole archive to create a table of contents doesn't mean it cannot be used as a directory, all I'm saying.

...no other archive format has a bigger installed support base...

Any proof? Tar is available for DOS, Win3.11-Win7, AmigaOS, OS/2, MacOS, MacOSX, all unix derivatives, etc. etc. etc. Even my cellphone stores it's backup in tar.gz.

I'm saying, tar is more than a decade older and much much simplier...

Hell, it's so f*cking simple, I can write a tar.gz unpacker for you in ~20 lines...