Chapter 7: FTP (4 of 6) -- Unix compression methods (file extensions)

    There are a wide variety of compression methods in use.  You can tell
which method was used by the last one to three letters at the end of a
file. Here are some of the more common ones and what you'll need to un-
compress the files they create (and these decompression programs can all
be located through archie).

.TXT          By itself, this means the file is a document, rather than a
              program. .DOC is another common suffix for documents. No
              de-compression is needed, unless it is followed by

.Z            This is a Unix compression method.  To uncompress the file,
              type

                        uncompress file.name.Z

              and hit enter at your host system's command prompt. If it's a
              text file, you can read it online by typing

                       zcat file.txt.Z | more

              at your host system's  command line . There is a Macintosh
              program called MacCompress that you can use on your machine
              if you want to  download  the file (use archie to find where
              you can get it!). There's an MS-DOS equivalent, often found
              as u16.ZIP, which means it is itself compressed in the ZIP
              format.

ZIP           An MS-DOS format. Use the PKZIP package (usually found as
              PKZ201.exe or something similar).

.ZOO          A Unix and MS-DOS format. Requires the use of a program
              called zoo.

.Hqx          A Macintosh format that needs BinHex for de-compression.

.SHAR         A Unix format. Use unshar

.tar          Another Unix format, often used to compress several related
              files into one big file. Use tar.  Often, a "tarred" file
              will also be compressed with the .Z method, so you first have
              to use uncompress and then tar.

.Sit          A Macintosh format, requires StuffIt.

.ARC          A DOS format that requires the use of ARC or ARCE.

      A few last words of caution: Check the size of a file before you
get it.  The Net moves data at phenomenal rates of speed.  But that
500,000-byte file that gets transferred to your host system in a few
seconds could take more than an hour or two to download to your computer
if you're using a  2400-baud  modem.  Your host system may also have
limits on the amount of bytes you can store online at any one time.
Also, although it is really extremely unlikely you will ever get a file
infected with a virus, if you plan to do much downloading over the Net,
you'd be wise to invest in a good anti-viral program, just in case.