Free decompression lib?

[GioFX]

Hi

on win32 platform I'm actually using the free (unique) unrar library, it's free and souce code works fine also for mac but I understand rar format isn't really diffuse for mac so .. someone knows a more mac-friendly good decompression library (with source code)? Maybe a de-sitter code?

tnx in advance & sorry my english
Gio

[imported_kelvin]

gnutar should do the trick.

in the terminal typeman tar

[Skorche]

gnutar should do the trick.

in the terminal type

I think he might mean a transparent decompression library so that you can load compressed files on the fly. If that's so, try zlib. zlib homepage (http://www.gzip.org/zlib/) It works with any OS, so that might simplify things for you.

[OneSadCookie]

Tar has the problem that it doesn't compress (and I don't think there's a library for it, only the command-line tool).

zlib has the problem that it doesn't aggregate several files into one (hence the use of .tar.gz on unix platforms).

the ZIP file format both aggregates and compresses; it's equally friendly to all three major platforms, and there are a few good libraries out there for reading it. zziplib ( http://zziplib.sourceforge.net/ ) is the one I can remember off the top of my head.

If this were me, though, I'd probably be ignoring the library "requirement" and popening one of the standard command-line tools. There are usage requirements which would stop this being a possibility, but not too many...

[Steven]

Bzip is a good choice too, and I believe it's unencumbered by patent issues, unlike some of the others...

[OneSadCookie]

LZW is out-of-patent now... is that what you're referring to?

And BZip2 has the same problem as GZip -- it doesn't aggregate, only compress. It's also a lot slower than GZip (though it gives much better compression), so the choice between it and GZip will depend on the use this is to be put to.

[Steven]

I seem to remember reading something (maybe on the EFF) that LZW, while being out of patent trouble in many countries by now, was still protected in some. The last expiration date that they could find was somewhere in 2006. So, if you want to distribute to other countries, that could be an issue. And as for the aggregation, just use libtar with libbzip2 and you don't even need an external program ;) They both come in dynamic libraries AFAIK.

[GioFX]

thanks to all, I'm searching in your urls
(btw the zlib says: "zlib for Mac OS X: zlib is already included as part of Mac OS X ")
8-|

Gio