There is a variety of programs that you can use to archive and/or
compress files.

If you will keep your files on athena, then you can use the "tar" and
"compress" commands.  Example:

	tar cvf archive.tar 6.111

That would archive the entire "6.111" directory into one file called
"archive.tar".  Then you could compress that file by typing:

	compress archive.tar

and you would end up having a file called "archive.tar.Z".  The .Z ending
means that a file is compressed, like .zip or .arc.  To unarchive the files
you could do things the other way:

	uncompress archive.tar.Z
	tar xvf archive.tar

You can type 

	man tar
	man compress

for more information about the above commands.

Gzip is another compression program on Athena.  It works similarly
to other compression progrmas like "compress" and "freeze", but has
better performance.  To gzip a file, type:

	add gnu
	gzip filename

To unzip a gzipped file, use gunzip:

	add gnu
	gunzip filename.gz

You can also read a gzipped file without uncompressing it.
Do:

	add gnu
	zcat filename.gz

This will send the gunzipped file information to standard output,
where you can read, edit, or save it as you like.

For more information, type:

	man gzip

This page has information on gzip, gunzip, and zcat, and examples
of all three.

Another, less commonly used compression program is called "freeze".  
The files it creates have the ".F" ending.  
You can use "freeze" to compress files, and "melt" to
uncompress them.  For more information, type:

	add sipb
	man freeze


If you want to use the compressed files on a PC or Mac, then you might
want to use a program like "pkzip" or "pkarc".  Athena does not support
either format, but programs that deal with these formats are available.

In the SIPB locker there are the following utilities:

	arc	
	zoo
	zip

To run either one of them type:

	add sipb
	programname

To find more information about them, type:

	add sipb
	man programname

There are also two programs which handle Macintosh BinHex 4.0 files -- one is
located in the consult locker.  To find more info about it, type:

	add consult
	man xbin

the other is located in the sipb locker.  To find more info about that one,
type:

	add sipb
	man mcvert

(last updated June 12 1997)