Package: arc (5.21q-10)

archive utility based on the MSDOS ARC program

This program is based on the MSDOS ARC program, version 5.21, plus a few enhancements.

ARC also performs Huffman Squeezing on data. The Huffman Squeeze algorithm was removed from MSDOS ARC after version 5.12. It turns out to be more efficient than Lempel-Ziv style compression when compressing graphic images. Squeeze analysis is always done now, and the best of packing, squeezing, or crunching is used.

Compresses and extracts Squashed files. "Squashing" was created by Phil Katz in his PKxxx series of ARC utility programs for MSDOS. Dan Lanciani wrote the original modifications to ARC's Crunch code to handle Squashing. Klaus Reimer made minor changes since then, mostly to reduce the amount of memory required. The 'q' option flag must be specified to Squash files. The Squashing algorithm will be used instead of the usual Crunch algorithm, and will be compared against packing and squeezing, as before.

This package provides the arc and marc commands. MARC can be used to merge files compressed by ARC.