Esort v0.1 (C) 1999 Arpad Gereoffy (A'rpi/ESP-team) <arpi@scene.hu>
==========
Esort is a very simple implementation of ESP archiver's sorting function
under UNIX/LINUX. It will be the base of ESP v2.0.
Currently you can use with TAR and GZIP or other solid compress prg.
Compile: gcc filter2.c -o esort
~~~~~~~~
Usage: It reads file list from STDIN and write sorted list to STDOUT
~~~~~~ ( esort <listfile >sortedlist )
It's difficult to use now :-(
For example: (it will compress contents of 'dirname' to 'dirname.tar.gz')
find dirname -print | esort > list
tar -cv -T list --no-recursion -f - | gzip -9 > dirname.tar.gz
rm list
But you can write a script to do this.
In most cases it will produce better ratio than simple tar+gzip, because
'esort' sort files optimized for the solid compression (gzip).
For example compressed Linux Kernel 2.2.9 source:
tar+gzip: 13954k
esort+tar+gzip: 13704k
Midnight Commander 4.1.35 source:
tar+gzip: 1617k
esort+tar+gzip: 1611k
Ok, I know, it isn't too much, about 1..2%.
But you can save a little disk space, or some time for modem downloaders,
and IT DOESN'T REQUIRES SPECIAL PROGRAM FOR DECOMPRESS! It will produce
standard portable (except M$ Winsux :)) .tar.gz files.
Note: It doesn't work with bzip2, I don't know why. Bzip2's ratio
will be worst using Esort before.
Please send ideas (and bugreports) to: arpi@esp-team.scene.hu, thanks.