compression error

[ahernandez]

Hello Everyone,

I came across an error using the compres command that I have never seen before. I was hoping someone could shed some light :

Compression: -15.91% -- file unchanged

this was part of some output from a script that performs routine maintenance on some directories. Large files are compressed and moved. The above error occured while trying to do a 'compress -v filename' on a file about 100M in size.

How does something get compressed to a negative percentage ?
Any insight would be appreciated.
Thanks

Alan

 

[pcunix]

Some files are already compressed, and some just can't be compressed at all- so the "compression" would actually end up making the file larger- in such cases, compress says the heck with it. Tony Lawrence
SCO Unix/Linux Resources

http://pcunix.com

tony@pcunix.com