[mdlug] Archive formats (was "Linux Format" March issue available for download)

[Aaron Kulkis]

Jeff Hanson wrote:
> On Wed, Mar 4, 2009 at 2:12 PM, Aaron Kulkis <akulkis00 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> But what's the installed base?
>>
>> What percentage of users even know where to get 7-zip?
>>
>> I'm not saying that it's a bad format -- only that it's
>> not appropriate for the purpose for which the archives
>> in question are being distributed.
> 
> The .7z format is obviously not as popular as zip.  But zip is not a
> great standard either as there have been different incompatible
> implementations over the years (WinZip being responsible for a lot of
> them).  My favorite are the ones that store full paths with the
> filenames instead of a hierarchy so you end up with a single directory
> of 100+ character filenames with forward slashes.

Other than system software, people who make archives with
absolute pathnames should be beaten over the head with
their own computer so that they never do it again.

> On the warez scene
> I see mostly RAR and some bizarre combinations like RARs of zips.  ACE
> is very rare.  Microsoft's archive format of choice was CAB.

As I recall, RAR has the advantage of being easily divided
into smaller files

.rar => .rar00, .rar01, .rar02...

without the Unix command "split", which, for some strange reason,
has STILL not been discovered and migrated by the Windows world.
(nor it's complement, "cat" which can be used to re-concatenate
file chunks back into the original file)

RAR was extremely important when system memory sizes started
climbing, but the largest removable media was still the old
3.5" floppy.