Re: Extract / Insert text files

Johan Vromans wrote:
> 
> tarballs have proven to be widely accepted. Zip would be a useful
> alternative. 

Even that's not necessary, since the popular Zip programs for Windows
all know how to read .tar and .gz files.  Tar.gz is a de facto
cross-platform standard.


> Text-based archives (shar, Perl) seem attractive since
> you can easily extract the POD docs, but once you add uuencoding and
> compression this advantage is lost.

Well, as in .tar.gz, you typically compress the whole archive file,
and that means you can have an uncompressed archive file, if you
just want to be able to extract the pod out of it.

Also, a tar file that contains ascii files (like perl scripts)
can be read without extraction, meaning pod2* can work directly
on the tar file.

So, IMHO, the only downside to using tar, instead of some self-
extraction scheme, is that it relies on an external utility.
This might not be bad, since everyone in the world has a program
which can extract tar files.


-- 
John Porter

Papa!  Es un gringo en la calle con su coche!