I want to keep the original files I'm going to compress. Looking through the man file it looks as if I should use the option '--backup'. Unfortunately I can't really decipher the manpage correctly. Is backup the correct option, is there another I should use, or should I just copy the directories I want to archive? This reminds me of another question I have: when I append these files from the top level directory will it append the files under it as well? On Wed, Nov 30, er at 5:28 PM, Michael Havens wrote: > are the options 'op'uld A' and 'r' in 'tar' the same thing? > 'm > > On Wed, Nov 30, 2011 at 5:07 PM, Matt Graham wrote: > >> From: Michael Havens >> > I want to compress a bunch [of] pictures to put a bunch on my zip >> > drive. What is the best program to use? >> >> Most image formats are already compressed in some way. JPEG, GIF, TIFF, >> and >> PNG are almost always compressed. Compressing an already-compressed data >> set >> doesn't usually buy you very much at all, 1 or 2% if that. >> >> > I was thinking 'zip' would be good >> >> See above. zip will work, though tar combined with bzip2 (or xz/lzma) >> may be >> more space-efficient at the cost of it taking longer to compress and >> uncompress the data. That's "tar cjf images.tar.bz2 images/" or "tar cJf >> images.tar.xz images/" to create compressed tarballs of everything in the >> images/ dir. Replace "tar cjf" with "tar xjf" to uncompress. >> >> -- >> Matt G / Dances With Crows >> The Crow202 Blog: http://crow202.org/wordpress/ >> There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see >> >> --------------------------------------------------- >> PLUG-discuss mailing list - PLUG-discuss@lists.plug.phoenix.az.us >> To subscribe, unsubscribe, or to change your mail settings: >> http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >> > > > > -- > :-)~MIKE~(-: > -- :-)~MIKE~(-: