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RBBS in a Box Volume 1 #2
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PAK-V-PK
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1988-12-04
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87 lines
PAK -V- PKPAK
(A comparision of archive programs)
"PAK" a new file compression utility, from NoGate Consulting, is
presented as a replacement for SEA's ARC program and Phil Katz's
PKARC program. The genesis for the program was the SEA -v-
PKWARE litigation which ultimately resulted in a settlement that
will apparently cause the withdrawal of all support of PKARC and
its' successor, PKPAK by January of 1989.
Although PAK claims to be Shareware, the BBS version is really an
evaluation package which does not have all the features available
in the "full screen version." Registration for the BBS version is
$15.00 and $30.00 for the full screen version.
The "full screen version" is advertised as being able to display
the file directory and archive contents and permits files to
tagged for easy selection of files to be extracted or compressed.
Purist's may claim that the foregoing means that PAK does not
meet the definition of "Shareware" Frankly, I don't believe it
makes any difference as NoGate's marketing method provides one
with a working copy that contains the essential functions of the
program. If you don't like those, the finer points become imma
terial.
Since I haven't tried the full screen version I have no first
hand information as to the ease with which files are tagged and
untagged or other aspects of its' operation. The description
sounds similar to a combination of PKPAK, PKUNPAK and menu pro
grams such as SHARC (Jim Deere.) However, no mention is made as
to whether one can view the files in PAC as one can with SHARC in
combination with Buerg's LIST program. My personal opinion is
that SHARC is a tremendous asset to the PK programs for anyone
who does much archiving. Combining the features of SHARC into
one archive program would seem to be a great selling point pro
vided the archiving aspect is entitled to consideration as a
viable alternative to the PKWARE programs.
By a strict definition, an archiver's primary objective is maxi
mum file compaction. However, I would suggest that in the real
world the speed with which the archive program operates is also a
consideration.
Although I have never personally used SEA's ARC program the
comments I have heard indicate that it is quite slow. Indeed, PAK
claims to be roughly 2.5 times faster.
On the other hand, PKPAK, among other things, is known for its'
speed. However due to the litigation brought by SEA what we know
as PKARC and PKPAK appears to be destined for never never land.
As a result, the computer community will be looking for another
archive program to adopt as the industry standard.
PAK admits that PKARC is quicker but claims that the archives it
produces are "consistently 50% to 90% of the size produced by
either ARC or PKARC." The claim is also made that PAK handles
large text and non-text files of any length much better than ei
ther of the other two.
Given the claims of PAK I decided to run a short comparison test
between it and PKPAK. The first test was a mixture of 103 .COM
and .EXE files which ranged in size from 128 to 70,704 bytes for
a total of 979,110 bytes. The second test was of 43 ASCII docu
ment files ranging in size from 267 to 4,041 bytes for a total of
624,130 bytes. The results appear in the table below:
103 .COM/EXE FILES 979,100 BYTES
PROGRAM ARCHIVE SIZE % OF ORG PAKTIME UNPAK
PAK.EXE .PAK 695,O82 .7099193 6:19.62 6:01.64
PKPAK.EXE .ARC 749,018 .7650066 2:35.60 2:15.74
43 ASCII .DOC FILES 624,130 BYTES
PAK.EXE .PAK 263,930 .4228766 2:43.00 2:47.17
PKPAK.EXE .ARC 276,312 .4427154 0:55.05 1:01.50
You can use the foregoing information to make your own decision
to whether PAK is a viable alternative to PKPAK.
Robert Hamilton
Grand Forks, ND