View source for Compact (Gene Olson)

{{FormatInfo
|name=compact (Gene Olson)
|formattype=electronic
|subcat=Compression
|extensions={{ext|W}}
|released=~1991
}}
{{DISPLAYTITLE:compact (Gene Olson)}}'''compact''' is an obscure file compression utility, and associated file format, developed by Gene H. Olson. It appears to have been abandoned early on, due to [[patents|patent]] concerns.

It uses [[LZW]] compression. It is essentially an improved version of [[Compress (Unix)|compress]], with an incompatible format. The recommended filename suffix is a capitalized '''.W'''.

It is not related to the older [[Compact (Unix)|compact]] format that uses [[adaptive Huffman coding]].

== Identification ==
There is a big-endian format, which starts with bytes {{magic|c5 a3}}, and a little-endian format, which starts with {{magic|a3 c5}}.

== Software ==
* [http://ftp.lyx.org/pub/unix/archive/compact_sV.tar.Z compact_sV.tar.Z] - Source distribution

[[Category:File formats with extension .w]]
[[Category:File formats with case sensitive extensions]]