file compress

[Foner@YUKON.SCRC.Symbolics.COM (Leonard N. Foner)]

    Date: Wed, 17 Oct 1990 10:31 EDT
    From: spr@prism.gatech.edu (Stefan Roth)

    Does anyone have a file compress/uncompress facility for the Symbolics? It
    would be nice if it were compatible with the UNIX compress, but that is not
    required.

Genera has had a compression/decompression substrate since the 8.0
release.  It's used for the sources tape in the Distribution frame, for
example.  It's quite fast (and may get faster yet, particularly for
decompression).  You can choose either Genera-style or UNIX-style
compression on output; it figures it out for you on input.

Neither 8.0 or 8.0.1 have a user interface for the substrate, though how
to use the substrate is well documented.  8.1 may (no promises) have a
user interface for this, so that users can do simple things like
compress files without having to talk to the substrate directly.

    Also, I need to compress both 8-bit and 16-bit files, but if it only works on
    8-bit files I will be very happy.

The compression substrate can handle any stream that is a multiple of eight
bits wide, of any "reasonable" element-type.

    The obvious question is, of course, is there such code on the Symbolics
    already?

    Please reply by email to the address below. I will summarize and post if there
    is a solution and enough interest.

    Thanks in advance.

    -- 
    Stefan Roth
    Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta Georgia, 30332
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