🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <111500025@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu>, glk01126@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu writes:
> 	Can't someone write a PACK/CRUNCH type dealie that
> compresses all writes and uncompresses the reads when any
> file action is done?

Yes and no.  This works only when you never need to do an update operation
on the file from any application.  A purely sequential file can be compressed
on write and decompressed on read, but it cannot be seek'ed into, records
cannot be skipped, and in all likelyhood, it cannot be appended to once
closed.  There are exceptions, of course.

The reason for this is that any two arbitrary strings of bytes of the same
length are unlikely to compress to the same number of bytes.  Change one
character in the uncompressed stream and the size of the compressed stream
may change by several bytes in either direction.

-- 
 _____________________________________________________________________________
    Daniel A. Glasser                           One of those things that goes
    uwvax!per2!dag                              "BUMP!!!(ouch)" in the night. 
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