Jeff Woods writes:
> Both mover and LZW provide functionality very similar to PKZIP with which
> many of us are familiar, however, LZW seems to be better at it than mover
> and certainly seems to have less confusion surrounding it.  It's entirely
> possible that something makes LZW unsuitable for replacing mover, but I
> don't know what it might be.

I just downloaded the latest LZW from Telamon, and it choked while attempting
to walk the BIND/iX POSIX directory tree.  The file names are being munged,
and eventally it dies:

ls -l /BIND/PUB/contrib/hostmaint

-rw-r--r--   1 MGR.BIND          BIND        3061 Oct 24  1996 Makefile
-rw-r--r--   1 MGR.BIND          BIND        1326 Oct 24  1996 host2txt.awk
-rw-r--r--   1 MGR.BIND          BIND       10803 Oct 24  1996 hosts.make
-rw-r--r--   1 MGR.BIND          BIND         326 Oct 24  1996 nddump2host.awk
-rw-r--r--   1 MGR.BIND          BIND        4249 Oct 24  1996 ndrev.c
-rw-r--r--   1 MGR.BIND          BIND         799 Oct 24  1996 nicnet.awk
-rw-r--r--   1 MGR.BIND          BIND        1294 Oct 24  1996 nictxt2host.awk
-rw-r--r--   1 MGR.BIND          BIND        1320 Oct 24  1996 txt2host.awk
-rw-r--r--   1 MGR.BIND          BIND        3217 Oct 24  1996 txt2named.awk
-rw-r--r--   1 MGR.BIND          BIND         206 Oct 24  1996 umich_nddump.in

LZW '-s /BIND/PUB/contrib/hostmaint/'

LZW: (C) 1991, 1997 - Telamon, Inc. - Version A.03.33 [A.02.04] (Apr  4 1997)
Store (Compress) (-m 14)
Use archive file lzwfile [CR for yes, ? for help]:
/BIND/PUB/contrib;DIR
   (-m 14) 97/06/06 16:49:41  drwxr-xr-x (0755)
   --Compressing
   ---MPE Posix stream files ["/BIND/PUB/contrib/hostmaint/Makefile"] not compre
ssable with this version!
   ---File "/BIND/PUB/contrib/hostmaint/host2txt.aw" does not exist!
   ---File "k" does not exist!
   ---MPE Posix stream files ["/BIND/PUB/contrib/hostmaint/hosts.make"] not comp
ressable with this version!
   ---File "/BIND/PUB/contrib/hostmaint/nddump2host" does not exist!
   ---File ".awk" does not exist!
   ---MPE Posix stream files ["/BIND/PUB/contrib/hostmaint/ndrev.c"] not compres
sable with this version!
   ---MPE Posix stream files ["/BIND/PUB/contrib/hostmaint/nicnet.awk"] not comp
ressable with this version!
   ---File "/BIND/PUB/contrib/hostmaint/nictxt2host" does not exist!
   ---File ".awk" does not exist!
   ---File "/BIND/PUB/contrib/hostmaint/txt2host.aw" does not exist!
   ---File "k" does not exist!
   ---File "/BIND/PUB/contrib/hostmaint/txt2named.a" does not exist!
   ---File "wk" does not exist!
   ---File "/BIND/PUB/contrib/hostmaint/umich_nddum" does not exist!
***NONEXISTENT GROUP  (FSERR 51)

+-F-I-L-E---I-N-F-O-R-M-A-T-I-O-N---D-I-S-P-L-A-Y+
!  ERROR NUMBER: 51    RESIDUE: 17746    (WORDS) !
!  BLOCK NUMBER: 0            NUMREC: 21024      !
+------------------------------------------------+
***Error number: 1301
Program terminated in an error state. (CIERR 976)

> If LZW isn't appropriate, then (IMO) another
> substitute should be found for mover or a new version of mover should be
> released (with a new, higher and UNIQUE version number) which ideally should
> be able to read from either mover format commonly found now.

This needs to be done.  The present situation is too darn confusing.
--
Mark Bixby                      E-mail: [log in to unmask]
Coast Community College Dist.   Web: http://www.cccd.edu/~markb/
District Information Services   1370 Adams Ave, Costa Mesa, CA, USA 92626-5429
Technical Support               +1 714 438-4647
"You can tune a file system, but you can't tune a fish." - tunefs(1M)