🚀 go-pugleaf

subbarao@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Kartik Subbarao) writes:

> Something went fishy the other day when it appeared that all of my .ZIP
> files were corrupted for some unknown reason. The reason is kind of odd,
> and thats why I'm asking why. The general way I used to create ZIP files
> of everything in a directory was to do this:
>
> pkzip zipfile *.*
> del *.*
> qu zipfile.zip # i.e unerase the just created ZIP file
>
> however, it appears that deleting and undeleting a zip file somehow changes
> it because afterwards when I do a pkunzip -t (or whatever the flag is that
> verifies the stuff) pkzip finds problems that pkzipfix can't even fix.
>
  The real culprit is that a newly created .ZIP file tends to be badly
fragmented. That's due to the temporary files created in the process. When
you delete everything, QU only knows where the FIRST cluster was. It has to
guess from then on.
  There is one easy way to fix it. BEFORE deleting your files, but after
creating the .ZIP, type IMAGE (Norton 5) or FR /SAVE (Norton 4.5). QU
will use the copy of the FAT created to help recover your file.
  Also, as someone else mentioned, there is a -m option that will delete
all files put into the .ZIP after it is successfully created.
  If you are running 4DOS, you could also use  EXCEPT (*.ZIP) del *.*
  Generically, you could also try ATTRIB +H *.ZIP before deleting.

---------------
Andrew Rossmann  andyross@infopls.UUCP or ..!uunet!ddsw1!infopls!system
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