Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How are zlib, gzip and zip related?

stackoverflow.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 81 posts

Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?

#41

Post by michaelrpeskin »

ctur wrote: post #3

What a great historical summary. Compression has moved on now but having grown up marveling at PKZip and maximizing usable space on very early computers, as well as compression in modems (v42bis ftw!), this field has always seemed magical. These days it generally is better to prefer Zstandard to zlib/gzip for many reasons. And if you need seekable format, consider squashfs as a reasonable choice. These stand on the s…

I had forgotten about modem compression. Back in the BBS days when you had to upload files to get new files, you usually had a ratio (20 bytes download for every byte you uploaded). I would always use the PKZIP no compression option for the archive to upload because Z-Modem would take care of compression over the wire. So I didn't burn my daily time limit by uploading a large file and I got more credit for my download ratios.

I was a silly kid.

Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?

#42

Post by koolba »

emmelaich wrote: post #39

Fun fact: in a sense. gzip can have multiple files, but not in a specially useful way ... $ echo meow >cat $ echo woof > dog $ gzip cat $ gzip dog $ cat cat.gz dog.gz >animals.gz $ gunzip animals.gz $ cat animals meow woof

> ... but not in a specially useful way ...

It can be very useful: https://github.com/google/crfs#introducing-stargz

Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?

#43

Post by bombela »

nerdponx wrote: post #23
bombela wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I learned this when I tried correcting the wikipedia page on Docker. I literally wrote the first prototype. But this wasn't enough source for wikipedia. And to this day the English page is still not truthfull (interestingly enough, the french version is closer to the truth).

You could publish a little webpage called "An historical note about the Docker prototype" under your own name, which you could then cite on Wikipedia. I think it makes perfect sense as a general and strict policy for an encyclopedia. It would simply be too hard to audit every case to check if it's someone like you, or a crank.

Maybe I should write the story as a comment on hacker news, and link to it ;)

Joke aside, I should probably take up on your advice.

Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?

#44

Post by EvanAnderson »

michaelrpeskin wrote: post #41
ctur wrote: post #3

What a great historical summary. Compression has moved on now but having grown up marveling at PKZip and maximizing usable space on very early computers, as well as compression in modems (v42bis ftw!), this field has always seemed magical. These days it generally is better to prefer Zstandard to zlib/gzip for many reasons. And if you need seekable format, consider squashfs as a reasonable choice. These stand on the s…

I had forgotten about modem compression. Back in the BBS days when you had to upload files to get new files, you usually had a ratio (20 bytes download for every byte you uploaded). I would always use the PKZIP no compression option for the archive to upload because Z-Modem would take care of compression over the wire. So I didn't burn my daily time limit by uploading a large file and I got more credit for my downloa…

That's really clever and likely would have gone unnoticed by a lot of sysops!

Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?

#45

Post by nerdponx »

dTal wrote: post #31
nerdponx wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could publish a little webpage called "An historical note about the Docker prototype" under your own name, which you could then cite on Wikipedia. I think it makes perfect sense as a general and strict policy for an encyclopedia. It would simply be too hard to audit every case to check if it's someone like you, or a crank.

I don't see how requiring someone to set up a little webpage filters out cranks. If anything I might expect it to favor them.

The idea is that it's a separate, distinct source, which exists outside of and independently from the encyclopedia itself, and can be archived, mirrored, etc. Its veracity and usefulness can then be debated or discussed as needed.

Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?

#46

Post by matheusmoreira »

FartyMcFarter wrote: post #12
dustypotato wrote: post #5

Found this hilarious: > This post is packed with so much history and information that I feel like some citations need be added > I am the reference (extracted a part of the conversation)

"I'm the one who knocks".

"I am the hype."

Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?

#47

Post by dcow »

norenh wrote: post #32
dcow wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPT info tools will fully replace SO in most dev workflows if it hasn’t already.

And what will GPT info tools learn from, once the public curated sources are gone?

Probably the great swaths of documentation out there that for most use cases people need not waste time sifting through if a computer can do it faster...

Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?

#48

Post by hawski »

norenh wrote: post #32
dcow wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GPT info tools will fully replace SO in most dev workflows if it hasn’t already.

And what will GPT info tools learn from, once the public curated sources are gone?

Isn't it fun, that ChatGPT's success poisoned the well for everyone else? :)

Re: How are zlib, gzip and zip related?

#49

Post by DigiDigiorno »

koolba wrote: post #42
emmelaich wrote: post #39

Fun fact: in a sense. gzip can have multiple files, but not in a specially useful way ... $ echo meow >cat $ echo woof > dog $ gzip cat $ gzip dog $ cat cat.gz dog.gz >animals.gz $ gunzip animals.gz $ cat animals meow woof

> ... but not in a specially useful way ... It can be very useful: https://github.com/google/crfs#introducing-stargz

It is specially useful, it is not especially/generally useful lol

It could be a typo, though I think when we say something "isn't specially/specifically/particularly useful" we mean "compared to the set of all features, specifically this subset feature is not that useful" not that the feature isn't useful for specific things

Post reply on HN