From: Thomas Hurst Date: 2002-03-21T01:32:50+09:00 Subject: Re: Archives * Pat Eyler (pate@eylerfamily.org) wrote: > I like the concept of having a single interface to a variety of > information sources. Picking a good name[1] may prove to be difficult > though. ar is already in use as the name of the static library tools > on unix/linux. gear (Get Every ARchive), par (Pan ARchive), roar [Ruby > Opens ARchives], Zanzibar (it just sounds cool, while including the > 'ar' phoneme) are not (I don't think) in use, though some of them are > pretty lame. I think you misunderstand where "ar" is from; this is Archive::Ar, ar being the files GNU ar(1) generates; it's a simple flat file archive format. The Ar reader is simply an example implimentation using the Archive::Entry class (and is used in rpkg). This framework will allow archive implimentations to support random access easily; even Tar, where the sort of caching Archive::Entry provides is immensely important (because seeking is so slow; a buffered IO handler will fit in well here too). We're also looking into an IO proxy that will allow each entry and/or part of an entry act as an IO stream acting only on part of a file, which introduces other intresting possibilities like reading other archives in the archive directly. -- Thomas 'Freaky' Hurst - freaky@aagh.net - http://www.aagh.net/ - Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.