Subject: Arced, Zipped etc files

13. *****
 Q: What is this file with this .zip (.arc, .arj, .lzh, .pak, .rar,
.sdn, .uc2, .zoo etc) extension? What am I supposed to do to it?
 Q2: I can't run this file I got with a .zip extension.

 A: This is a PC newcomer's question, but that is perfectly all
right. One has to start from somewhere. These files with a .zip
(.arc, .arj, .lzh, .pak, .rar, .sdn, .uc2, .zoo etc) extension are
compressed collections of files, often called archives. You are not
supposed to run a compressed entity. You are supposed to unpack it
first to extract the files from within the package. For this you
need the relevant (un)packing program. You can find them in the
/pc/arcers (some in /pc/goldies, some in /pc/unix) directory at the
anonymous ftp site garbo.uwasa.fi, its mirrors, or at practically
any fine bulletin board. (After you have gotten them, they are very
easy to process, since most often these utilities are
self-extracting). At the time of writing this we have e.g.
  arc602.exe     .arc  SEA's .arc packing/unpacking system.
  arce40g.zip    .arc  Buerg's extraction, also for SEA's new .arc
  pk361.exe      .arc  This packed and unpacked .arc files fast
  arj250a.exe    .arj  Robert Jung's .arj archiver
  gzip124.zip    .(g)z GNU gzip compress, don't confuse with (pk)zip
  ha098.zip      .ha   Harri Hirvola's slow but efficient archiver
  hpack78.zip    .hpk  HPACK Multi-System Archiver
  lha255b.exe    .lzh  LHa for .lzh compression
  pak251.exe     .pak  NoGate's for pak, arc, sdn, zip, files
  rar155.exe     .rar  RAR, Russian archiver by E.Roshal
  sqz1083e.exe   .sqz  SQUEEZE from Sweden.
  uc2pro.exe     .uc2  UltraCompressor II archiver pro from AIP-NL
  ue.exe         .uc2  UltraExpander II: free expander for UC2 archives
  pkz204g.exe    .zip  PKWare's PKZIP/PKUNZIP 2.04G
  unz512x.exe    .zip  Info-ZIP group's 2.04G compatible extractor
  zoo210.exe     .zoo  Zoo packing facility from Rahul Dhesi
Always use the latest version. For example we have been getting many
false alarms of allegedly corrupt .zip packages just because users
have been applying out of date PKUNZIP versions.
   Once you are well familiar with unpacking and packing, there is
an excellent shell for running these utilities. It is called SHEZ
and is in version ftp://garbo.uwasa.fi/pc/arcutil/shez109.zip at the
time I revised this item.
   Another advanced feature once you get the hang of this, is that
(most of) these are available in the Unix environment, as well. See
the /unix/arcers directory at garbo.uwasa.fi archives for the Unix
versions. E.g. you can find zoo210.tar.Z in there, etc. See
/pc/unix/0news-u for more on the Unix versions.
--------------------------------------------------------------------