Compressed Files

Many large files on an FTP server will be in compressed format. This helps save congestion when tranferring files but reducing the transfer time. Compressed files will need to be tranferred using the BINARY transfer mode.

Identifying Compressed Files

Compressed files will be suffixed in a certain way, depending on what utility was used to compress them. A couple of examples are the suffices (or 'extensions') .Z which can be decompressed using the UNIX command uncompress filename, and there is also .zip which Dept Users will find useful since it indicates files suitable for DOS or Windows on 386/486 PCs.

Decompressing a Zipped File

For Dept Users, the decompression program for filenames suffixed with .zip (or .ZIP) is located on the departmental network. All you have to do is to type the command pkunzip filename.zip then press ENTER. It is good practice to first put this file in an empty directory.

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