On Sat, Apr 28, 2001 at 09:36:28PM -0700, Alexander Hvostov wrote: > Why not put the core into a library (libdarj.so or something)? This > sounds like something that could be used by a multitude of programs > (eg, Nautilus). This would also allow you to make one program that > wraps the library and behaves like a proper unix utility, and then > another that mimics unarj.
I've been thinking about that. Unfortunately a library is harder to write. For example, darj simply exits if it runs out of memory, and this simplifies the internal interfaces a great deal. But it's not polite in a library. I will consider this after finishing the unarj clone. I'm a fan of refactoring :) I'll have a much better idea of what should go into the library after I've designed two different tools that use it. > Are you planning to make a compressor at some point? I imagine if you > can figure out the format well enough to extract from it, it wouldn't > be much harder to be able to create/modify archives as well. A compressor tends to be much harder to write than a decompressor, actually. And I don't think arj as an archive format has much going for it these days -- it's designed for msdos file attributes and file types. It can't represent symbolic links, for example. So, no, I don't intend to write a compressor. Richard Braakman
