[Coco] Re: AR, etc & incompatible formats

[Dean Leiber]

>I have  three different versions of AR.  1.2, 1.3, and 2.0.  I know
>ONE was supposed to be an experimental, "do not use" version that got
>used anyway, but I don't remember which one. :-(  I also have a
>BASIC-09 utility that converts (I think) 1.3 files to 1.2.  

There was also an Ar1.4 and an Ar1.5. If memory serves AR1.5 was the 
'problem' child. It creates AR archives which, obviously the older ARs 
can't open, but neither can Ar2.0. I keep a copy of Ar1.5 around just to 
break these problem archives.

There was also a non standard LZH archive format as well. The program 
which created it was conveniently called LZH as well! The deal was if you 
didn't use the correct option you'd get a LZH archive other archivers 
couldn't open. I keep a copy of that around as well.

OS-9 also had the following other formats:

.Z - A compressed file from Unix typically. There was a compress utility 
for OS-9
.Tar - A Unix Tar archive. I believe OS-9 has a tar utility as well
.Arc - There was an OS-9 version of this archiver (os9arc & dearc I think)
.Pak - I think its an OS-9 only format. It was popular at one point, but 
AR quickly replaced it. There are still PAK archives floating around on 
my backup disks. 
.lha/.lzh - There was a lha utility, and an unlzh (or was it unlha), not 
to mention the above LZH.

Also, as a side note on OSK, there was a utility to break .Sit archives 
(popular on the mac) but only SIt files created by the very first SIT. 
Apparently it was very similar to compress internally. I remember porting 
it from Unix but I don't know if its still floating around anywhere 
anymore.

Dean