pack vs. compress

[Robert Halloran]

In article <2273 at megadon.UUCP> gil at saturn.ucsc.edu (Gil Fuchs) writes:
>compress works on any length filenames.  Why doesn't pack do the same???
>what can be done about it (assuming one doesn't want to shorten the file names)

Taking a quick peek at the source :-), pack.c has the usual pre-SVr4
restriction on filename length (14 characters) hard-coded in.  I would
assume it would be possible to rebuild it to handle longer BSD-ish names.

On the other hand, compress is PD, is part of current BSD and SVr4, and
usually manages better reduction than pack.  If you have to send stuff and
your recipient doesn't have compress, why not include it as part of the
send?

						Bob Halloran
						Distributed Programming Tools Group
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