🚀 go-pugleaf

I tested the PKARC and PKXARC programs obtained from the self-un-packing
PKX33A12.COM program, and compared their performance to ARC version 5.10.
I used three "data" files in my test: ARC.DOC, the doc file for arc; 
ARC.EXE, the arc program itself; and T, a text file I had handy.

                  -------ARC------------       --------PK-----------
                   In                Out        In               Out
File     Size     Time  %    Size   Time       Time  %   Size   Time
ARC.DOC  60168    82    59   24711  40         14    58  25513   8
ARC.EXE  32051    64    20   27519  30          9    32  21904   6
T        14808    24    53    7071  11          5    53   7102   2

All tests were run totally in ramdisk (both programs and all files) on a
vanilla IBM PC.  The first "Time" is time to put the file in a new archive.
The % is the crunch factor, the "Size" is the size of the resulting
archive and the second "Time" is the time to extract the file from the
archive.  All times are done with a sweep second hand, and include the
program load time (at most 1 second) and are in seconds.

The PK programs seem to run about 5x as fast as the ARC program, and to
produce compression which varies from slightly worse to considerably
better than what ARC does.

The two programs do seem to be "compatible" in that they seem able to
unpack each other's archives.  (I only made a cursory test of this.)

--henry schaffer  n c state univ