From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 From: cowan at ccil.org (John Cowan) Date: Fri, 27 Nov 2020 10:57:43 -0500 Subject: [TUHS] Why do compress(1) and pack(1) use the .Z / .z extension? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Fri, Nov 27, 2020 at 8:07 AM Hans Wennborg wrote: I'm trying to find out why compress(1) uses .Z as filename extension. > > My theory is that it was inspired by pack(1), which uses the .z extension. > I think that connection is plain. As for the .z extension, I'd guess (and it's nothing better than that, just a conclusion I jumped to long ago) that it makes compressed files sort after files that share the same root name. IIRC, compress(1) used to be able to unpack files as well as uncompressing them. I don't know if that's still true. John Cowan http://vrici.lojban.org/~cowan cowan at ccil.org May the hair on your toes never fall out! --Thorin Oakenshield (to Bilbo) -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: