From: Robert Klemme <shortcutter@...>
Date: 2008-02-19T19:36:46+09:00
Subject: Re: OT: Why are .zip files so much bigger than tar.gz files?

2008/2/19, Trans <transfire@gmail.com>:
> So I has started to offer .zip packages of my projects to make life a
> little easier for Windows folks --seeing as it's no sweat off the
> backs of Linux folks either (unzip) --but then I noticed that zip
> files are huge. I have a 1MB tar.gz that's over 3MB as a .zip. Can
> that really be right?

The reason is that in a ZIP all entries are compressed individually
while in a TGZ or TBZ the whole stream is compressed.  The effect
shows especially when there are many small files with similar content
as is typical for source code.

However, I do have seen ZIP files that were similarly sized -
certainly not as much difference as you have observed.  This may also
depend on the compression algorithm used in a ZIP (I believe IZArc for
example supports three different compression algorithms for ZIP).

Kind regards

robert

-- 
use.inject do |as, often| as.you_can - without end