News Group Posts

mac os x stuffit vs. tar

From: matt@tidbits.com (matt neuburg)
Subject: Re: Stuffit Deluxe 7.0.1 Extremely Slow
References: <slrnb1764q.4df.cwaiken@bigdaddy.local>
<010120031825139466%jerrykindall@nospam.invalid> 
Date: Thu, 02 Jan 2003 02:39:36 GMT

In article <010120031825139466%jerrykindall@nospam.invalid>,
usenet@jerrykindall.com wrote:

> In article <slrnb1764q.4df.cwaiken@bigdaddy.local>, Christopher W Aiken
> <cwaiken@nospam.com> wrote:
> 
> > Has anyone purchased Stuffit Deluxe 7.0.1?  I find it extremely
> > slow.  I started a new archive to compress a 1GB directory at
> > the max compression level and it took 1 hour and 15 minutes to 
> > complete!!!  Since it took so long I opened up a Terminal.app
> > and used "tar -czvf name.tgz directory" to generate a tar file
> > archive of the same directory "gzipping" ( the -z option ) each 
> > file.  The tar process only took 8 minutes.  The resulting file 
> > was within 1MB of the Stuffit file.
> > 
> > I should have saved my money and not purchased Stuffit Delux. 
> > Not much use for creating compressed archives of directories
> > when it takes that long. Even Winzip and PkZip on IBM compatible
> > PC's don't take over an hour to compress a 1GB directory.
> 
> Let's see... you chose the compression setting that essentially means
> "take a really long time but compress the archive as much as you can."
> Lo and behold, StuffIt took a really long time but compressed the
> archive as much as it could!

Plus of course the tgz file has thrown away all the HFS+ metadata,
creation dates, resource forks, etc., whereas the Stuffit archive keeps
all that. As Jerry rightly implies, it's a question of priorities; if you
don't care about that stuff then by all means make a tarball. m.

-- 
matt neuburg, phd = matt@tidbits.com, http://www.tidbits.com/matt
      *** REALbasic: The Definitive Guide! 2nd edition! ***
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596001770/somethingsbymatt
 

Comments?

Jump to Comments

Many of the products and books I review are things I purchased for my own use. Some were given to me specifically for the purpose of reviewing them. I resell or can earn commissions from the sale of some of these items. Links within these pages may be affiliate links that pay me for referring you to them. That's mostly insignificant amounts of money; whenever it is not I have made my relationship plain. I also may own stock in companies mentioned here. If you have any question, please do feel free to contact me.

Specific links that take you to pages that allow you to purchase the item I reviewed are very likely to pay me a commission. Many of the books I review were given to me by the publishers specifically for the purpose of writing a review. These gifts and referral fees do not affect my opinions; I often give bad reviews anyway.

We use Google third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.