Forum Home
Press F1
 
Thread ID: 22243 2002-07-15 06:08:00 How does winzip work? forrest44 (754) Press F1
Post ID Timestamp Content User
62765 2002-07-15 06:08:00 How does winzip compress files? forrest44 (754)
62766 2002-07-15 06:16:00 Winzip uses compression.
Simply put (courtesy of the web)

Compression uses what is known as an algorithm (any set of instructions to be followed in order) to take a data file as input and make sure the output is a much smaller file. As an example, take a string of characters -

cheese and ham and more cheese

How else could this string of characters be represented? Well, we could make up a code. Notice the words "and" and "cheese" appear twice in the string, we could encode (compress) the string as follows:

b="cheese"
c="and"

to get:

b c ham c more b

If this is applied to a whole file only concentrating on frequently used code or text, the file could be made considerably smaller. This is an example of a fixed length code.
godfather (25)
1