From: Bill C. Riemers (bcr@bohr.physics.purdue.edu)
Date: 04/14/93


From: bcr@bohr.physics.purdue.edu (Bill C. Riemers)
Subject: Re: What are the .z files?
Date: 14 Apr 1993 20:24:42 GMT

In article <1993Apr14.183106.19013@mnemosyne.cs.du.edu> zevans@nyx.cs.du.edu (Zack Evans) writes:
>Yes, they are gzipped...GNU zip - check archie for availability. If
>Richard Stallman ever made a mistake it was starting to use gzip IMHO,
>what was wrong with .tar.Z?

Why not just .tar?

It has been my experience that gzip is as much of a saving of space over
compress as compress is over normal files. So if we can justify .Z files
we can use the same justification to use .z files instead. What I find
interesting is that gzip and gunzip seems just as fast as compress and
uncompress. So if I had my way, I would add in an option to use old style
compress with gzip and then do away with compress on any system that still
uses it!

                                                Bill