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-
- compress.doc Version 2.3
- 15-Aug-80
-
- this program compresses/expands any valid ASCII text
- file. the CP/M CRLF sequence is replaced by NL, and
- strings of identical characters of greater than 3 bytes
- are reduced to 3 bytes in the following format:
-
- byte 1: repeat code RCODE 000Q
- byte 2: repeat count cntr ---Q
- byte 3: character c ---Q
-
- in addition, the most common key-words of various
- languages (BASIC, ASSEMBLER, FORTRAN, etc.), as
- well as a number of miscellaneous strings, are
- tokenized to 1 byte. the average total disk space
- saved is approximately 20%. processing time is
- approximately 30" for a 10K file with read-after-
- write (RAW) in a 40K system.
-
- considerable protection has been built in to avoid
- such disasters as compressing a compressed file or
- expanding an ordinary file. the following chart
- summarizes legal and illegal modes:
-
- normal file <-----------------> compressed file
-
- /C /E
-
- .ASM ---> assembler source <--- .$AS
- .BAS ---> CBASIC source <--- .$BA
- .C ---> C source <--- .$C
- .COB ---> COBOL source <--- .$CO
- .DAT ---> general data file <--- .$DA
- .DOC ---> general documentation <--- .$DO
- .FOR ---> FORTRAN source <--- .$FO
- .LIB ---> library source <--- .$LI
- .MAC ---> macro-assembler source <--- .$MA
- .MBA ---> MBASIC source <--- .$MB
- (requires verification)
- .RAT ---> RATFOR source <--- .$RA
- .SRC ---> PASCAL source <--- .$SR
- .TXT ---> general text file <--- .$TX
- (requires verification)
-
- all other operations are considered illegal and the
- program will abort. note that all files which have
- been processed with earlier versions of COMPRESS will
- be handled correctly by this version and any future
- versions will be upward-compatible.
-
- the supplied version requires a minimum of 40K in
- which to operate. note also that there must be
- sufficient space on the disk to hold both the
- compressed and normal files during processing. upon
- successful completion, the original file (normal
- in the case of compression - compressed in the case
- of expansion) is deleted.
-
- compressed files should be PIPed using the [O] option.
-
- A>compress {dev:}filename.ext /switch
-
- /c compress file
- /e expand file