Bug with --compress?

[Michael D. Adams]

Is this a bug or are there known limits that "compress" has?  (Besides
being older and less used than --gzip or --bzip2.)

$ wget ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/tar/tar-1.22.90.tar.gz # get an example
file to compress
$ md5sum tar-1.22.90.tar.gz
499cceb9d2c2b02421ee08e2e61fb233  tar-1.22.90.tar.gz
$ tar --create --file TAR --compress tar-1.22.90.tar.gz
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error exit delayed from previous errors

Both tar-1.22.90 and tar-1.15.1 show this problem.  I haven't yet
identified what kind of files cause this.  It may be a file length
issue.

Michael D. Adams

[Sergey Poznyakoff-2]

Michael D. Adams <mdmkolbe@...> ha escrit:

> Is this a bug or are there known limits that "compress" has?  (Besides
> being older and less used than --gzip or --bzip2.)

Compress returns status 2 if the size of the resulting file (i.e.
after compression) is greater than that of the input file.

Regards,
Sergey