Re: files with tar.gz

[Thornton Prime <thornton yoyoweb com>]

On Thu, 1 Feb 2001, John Marlovits wrote:
> Can't I run one thing to totaly uncomress these?  Why are they double compressed?

It's also worth noting that tar archives and doesn't compress wheras gzip
compresses and doesn't archive. Many alternative tools (like pkzip, arj or
lha) do both.

At first glance it might seem stupid, but it is actually a great design.
Not only does tar allow you to use any compression format of your
choosing while keeping a consistent archive format, it is designed to work
well wwhen archiving data to devices that provide hardware compression (like a
tape drive) that might provide better compression if the data is not
compressed at all.

thornton