> > Do you know of any lighter/simpler alternative to the tar program? [...] > > Any idea? > > cpio? > > -- > RMA.
Thanks Mihamina, Kushal and Mark. Actually what I want is to compress a set of ascii files. I did some preliminary tests and I'd like to use 7zip or xz. When used on single files, xz performs consistently better... Well, actually, these individual files are small so this might just be related to a fixed size header which is just smaller in the xz file format... But xz also allows stream compression using pipes, which is definitely a plus. However, that's it: xz can't compress a full directory. I tried to use tar but the FS metadata make the compressed file heavier. cpio (completely forgot about this one) allows me to reach 7zip compression ratio with xz, works very well with streams and is available on many, if not all Linux systems. Thanks for your suggestion Mihamina, Kushal. Kushal, I did not find any option to disable FS metadata preservation in tar man page. I might have missed something though. But I am curious to see if this can be achieved with tar. Mark, thanks for your suggestion. I have not been precise enough. And actually, xz files can be catted together, but each of the xz file keeps its header. And since these headers are almost identical, one can compress them again. But still, the result is not great. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/1343209423.8462.21.ca...@p76-nom-gd.cnrs-imn.fr