LZWCOM

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File Format
Name LZWCOM
Ontology
Released ~1985

LZWCOM is a file compression utility, and associated file format, developed by Kent Williams. It uses hashed LZW compression. The companion decompression utility is LZWUNC.

Contents

Format details

Version 2.0 of the software changed the format in an incompatible way. It inserts a CRC-16 field (apparently CRC-16/ARC) after every 1024 bytes of compressed data. It is a CRC of the compressed data, not the decompressed data.

Identifiers

The software does not have a default filename extension or naming pattern. It's not clear if any conventions emerged.

Identification

LZWCOM format has no header or signature. If a file is at least 1026 bytes in size, then the CRC field at offset 1024 (and 2050, 3076, ...) can be tested to identify v2 format with decent accuracy. Other than that, there's probably no good way to identify an LZWCOM file from its contents.

Related formats

LZWCOM's compression scheme was used, sometimes with minor changes, by:

  • ARC - compression methods 5 and 6
  • Crunch - especially Crunch v1.x format
  • ZSQ

Software

There appear to be at least three releases of the software. Two of them lack a version number; we'll call them "first release" and "second release".

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