Re: Utility for compacted file with ".C" file extension?

According to -hh <recscuba_google@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>:
Looks like this has been a tough question that hasn't gotten answers
in the past. Archives have a couple of examples of folks who appear
to have been looking for the same thing that I am.

The source is an old file that has been on a Unix system, vintage
1994, probably BSD flavor.

Utlity's purpose was to make files smaller; the name "compact" sounds
very familiar. The source was a text file (not a C/C++ source) that
had no extension, but after running of the file size reduction utility
received a suffix of ".C" (might have been ".c"?).

Some googling showed me this:

http://docs.hp.com/en/B2355-90128/compact.1.html

which apparently means that HP/UX has the utility you are looking for.
HP/UX is not (and has never been, as far as I know) opensource, hence
there is no available source code. The "compact" utility is there
documented as having been authored by "Colin L. Mc Master".

Some more googling sent me to:

http://www.mcmaster.org/index.shtml

which is the homepage for someone called "Colin L. Mc Master", but
I don't know if that is the same guy than above.

I also got this:

http://cgi.sover.net/cgi-bin/bsdi-man?proto=1.1&query=compact&msection=1&apropos=0

which is the man page for "compact" as it were in BSD/386, aka BSD/OS,
aka BSDI. That one was not opensource either. And it has now
disappeared. 386BSD was supposed to have inherited much of BSD/386, and
386BSD morphed into NetBSD and FreeBSD at some time around 1993. Modern
FreeBSD and NetBSD do not have "compact".


Now it so happens that HP maintains a few systems online with public
shell access; you just need to register at www.testdrive.hp.com, and it
is free. Some of the machines run under HP/UX. I just tried: at least
the td192.testdrive.hp.com machine (running HP-UX 11i 11.1) has the
"compact" utility, and, more importantly, the "uncompact" utility.


--Thomas Pornin
.