BL> I checked it again and Paul is right. But I tested it once
 BL> before when I was writing a QWK reader trying to use the zipped
 BL> size to identify the QWK packet... and I kept getting a
 BL> different size. God knows why.

 FM> I think OLX uses a similar strategy, but probably records the
 FM> size after re-zipping so it doesn't run into that problem.

  BlueWave uses date/time.

 BL> Ahhh... that's possible. It was in VB and I was calling PKZIP.
 BL> Perhaps Windows gave me different memory each time! It's
 BL> certainly not doing it now, as a straight zip with lots of
 BL> cache.

 FM> Cache won't matter, it'll be the amount of memory it can grab.

  I thought Windows used cache as VM.

 FM> Huffman coding is perhaps the most complex thing you'll have to
 FM> get your mind around, and is essential - it's part of every
 FM> commercial compression implementation I've studied. And just
 FM> when you thought you knew it all, some guru comes up with
 FM> something new.

  It's on my list... so far I've only got the basic idea.

 FM> There's a new technique which promises to be even better than
 FM> the top popular programs like ZIP, LHARC & ARJ at least for
 FM> text, which was published in Dr. Dobbs earlier this year and is
 FM> available from the author's web site including source.
 FM> Let me know if you want it. Of course the code is in 'C' which
 FM> is some sort of low-level programming language and is
 FM> incomprehensible, but the text description gives a very well
 FM> written (IMHO) explanation.

  I'd like the description, but forget the C code. I've been writing
in C for more than a month now and I can do it without thinking, but I
*still* can't make any sense of other people's code! Dickheads! I
wonder if they ever *had* the plot before they lost it...

  It's a huge temptation to write shorthand C, but what the hell is
the point of it? It doesn't make the actual machine code run any
faster. In fact, in spite of all Paul's bullshit, C is only a few
percent faster than Pascal anyway, and the price you have to pay is
obscure code and basically incomprehensible objects!

  I *finally* understand what was causing my problems with pointers in
C. It's the dickhead way they use "*"! In Pascal ^p and p^ makes
perfect sense.

Regards,
Bob
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12
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