zip (was: Re: Disk archival techniques)

[Jules Richardson]

On Tue, 2005-05-17 at 16:03 -0700, Al Kossow wrote:
> If it *is* portable, it might seem a better choice for archives over
> tar, simply because more systems these days can handle zip files than
> can handle tar files...
> 
> --
> 
> Writing a program to unpack a tar archive is not difficult.

Sure - but more current systems typically have zip tools on them than
tar IMHO... my thought was more one of how likely someone else would be
of being able to handle the archive with whatever they had to hand.

> The problem I see with zip is the single table of contents at the end.
> Did you try corrupting THAT with a hex editor?

Ahh, no not at the time. I've just tried it now though and it seems
remarkably good at recovering from corruption in the TOC area. Actually,
looking at the zip file it appears to have something resembling a file
header before each file in the archive as well as the TOC at the end.
Whether that's always the case or some sort of optional extra, I don't
know. 

cheers

Jules