PGMPAK FAST! Program Compress Utility Version 0.13 04-01-90 written in Bulgaria by Todor Todorov Documentation PGMPAK is a .EXE (or .COM) file compression utility, similar to Microsoft's EXEPACK. It allows you to execute the compressed files. The main difference between PGMPAK and EXEPACK is that PGMPAK performs   REAL compression (normally 20 to 50%), while EXEPACK rarely gives you compression over 2%. However, decompression is not much slower (32K bytes per second on 4.77 MHz IBM PC). Compression is about 10 times slower. To run successfully PGMPAK and compressed programs use MS-DOS 2.0 or later. To start PGMPAK just type PGMPAK followed by the names of files you wish to compress. Each name may contain drive and/or path as well as wildcards. PGMPAK will try to compress the files that match the specified names, displaying percentage of file space saved for each compressed file. Some files couldn't be compressed, so they would be left unchanged. Example: PGMPAK *.COM *.EXE will try to compress all executable files in the current directory. Warning: There is no way to restore already compressed files to their original form, so be cautious when specifying the names. Compressing text files is no good! While running, PGMPAK creates 1 to 3 temporary files for each file it is compressing. The default subdirectory for these files is \. PGMPAK can be told which drive and/or subdirectory to use for temporary files by setting the environment variable PKTMP. You should set PKTMP to the fastest drive you have. For example, if drive D is a RAMdisk, you can enter: SET PKTMP=D: to increase the speed of compressing. Warning: If the PKTMP variable was specified to an invalid drive and/or path, PGMPAK will abort displaying an error message! You can type Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Break to interrupt compressing. In this case, temporary files are deleted and the last file PGMPAK was compressing remains unchanged. However, you should NEVER interrupt PGMPAK after the message 'smashing (xx%)' has appeared. Under certain circumstances, PGMPAK will print an error message and abort, returning the corresponding code. Here are the messages: return message meaning code 0 All is OK; Some files was processed; 1 No arguments was given; Help was displayed; 2 Disk error! DOS returned an error; May be Disk full; 3 No files found! No files were found to compress; 4 Memory full! Not enough memory; 256K should be enough; 5 Disk full! Not enough disk space for temporary files; 6 Somebody pressed Ctrl-C or Ctrl-Break. This is a preliminary version. The probability of some bugs is relatively big. If you have any questions or comments about PGMPAK send a message to Todor Todorov at: Danbo BBS, Varna, Bulgaria +359-52-885703 System Hours 21:00 - 08:00 local time Special thanks to PKWARE and especially to Phil Katz for some useful ideas derived from his excellent program PKZIP. Copyright (c) 1989,1990 Todor Todorov. All Rights Reserved. You are free to use and distribute PGMPAK for noncommercial use only. Please distribute the file PGMPAK.ZIP rather than PGMPAK.EXE itself. This program is provided AS IS without any warranty, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to fitness for any particular purpose. In no event will the copyright owner be liable for direct, indirect, incidental, or consequential damages resulting from this software, even if he has been advised of the possibility of such damages. IBM, PC are trademarks of IBM Corp. Microsoft, MS-DOS are trademarks of Microsoft Corp. PKZIP is a trademark of PKWARE, Inc.