WWPACK

Revision as of 14:39, 30 July 2023

WWPACK is an executable compression utility for DOS, developed by Piotr Warezak and Rafal Wierzbicki. Its main feature is compression of EXE files.

See also WWPack32, a related utility for Windows.

Discussion

Version 3.00+ can also compress arbitrary data files. Such files are compressed using the "PD" command, and decompressed with "UD".

Version 3.03+ can also compress COM files, converting them to EXE.

The registered version of WWPACK v3.03+ has a "U" command, to decompress (some) executable files compressed with WWPACK.

No WWPACK versions prior to 3.00 have been found. Based on the 3.00 documentation, there were five such releases: 2.00 (1993-11-24), 2.01, 2.02a, 2.03, and 2.04. Prior to v3.00, WWPACK only compressed the DOS "relocation table". It became a full-fledged executable compression utility as of v3.00.

Identification

EXE files compressed by WWPACK probably have ASCII "WWP" at offset 28.

Data files compressed by WWPACK begin with "WWP".

Software

• WWPACK
  • v3.00
  • v3.01: Best of Walnut Creek CD ROM (April 1995) → DISCS/SIMTEL/WWP301.ZIP
  • v3.02
  • v3.02a
  • v3.03
  • v3.04
  • v3.04a
  • v3.04a with German installer and documentation
  • v3.05 beta 3
  • v3.05 beta 5

Ed. note: Some versions of WWPACK will refuse to run unless the timestamp of the WWPACK.EXE file is exactly correct. For v3.04, it must be 1996-01-06 03:04:00am. For v3.04a, it must be 1996-01-21 03:04:00am.

For some utilities that might be able to decompress WWPACK-compressed EXE files, see Executable compression#Decompression software.