Re: [Zutils-bug] fixing bug- conflict's between the zutil's commands and the gzip uility's (zcat,zcmp,zdiff etc...) whith the same name

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Hello Gilsan,

gilsan lpuser wrote:
>        * replace the first's lowercase's letters 'z' of zutil's commands
>          (excep the 'zutils' command itself) by uppercase 'Z', because of
>          conflicts whith the sames commands shipped which gzip. According
>          all the source code whith the news name (beginning now whith 'Z')
>          of zutils commands.

Thanks for the patch. Yours is an interesting solution, but in the long 
term I am convinced it is much better for everybody that zutils replaces 
the old scripts shipped with gzip.


This question has been discussed previously at some places. See for 
example http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lzip-bug/2009-08/msg00004.html
"The obvious solution is gzip maintainer renaming zcat, zgrep and zdiff 
to gzcat, gzgrep and gzdiff. I wrote him, but he has not answered yet. 
I'll write to him again.

IMHO it is better for users a single set of utilities with support for 
several compressors instead of every compressor distributing its own 
tool for its own format."


See also http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=540232
"FYI, I had similar problems when I did the lzip MacPorts port under
Mac OS X. So, I suggested Antonio (the author of lzip) to separate
these utilities from his software and write a zutils package, that
would could support various compression formats. Other compression
software (such as gzip) should also drop them, in favor of zutils."


The only cause preventing zutils from replacing the old scripts shipped 
with gzip is the refusal of the current maintainer of gzip to rename the 
prefix of his scripts to "gz".


Best regards,
Antonio.