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1.2 Unpacking

C-INTERCAL is distributed in compressed pax format; for instance, you may find it as a ‘.pax.lzma’ file if you have the unlzma decompression program (this is advised, as it’s the smallest); ‘.pax.bz2’ is larger and ‘.pax.gz’ is larger still. Most computers can decompress files in this format, even if they don’t realise it, because pax is forwards-compatible with tar; try renaming the extension from ‘.pax’ to ‘.tar’ after decompressing to see if you have a progam that can decompress it. (If you’re wondering why such an apparently non-standard format is being used, this is is actually a case where C-INTERCAL is being perfectly nonstandard by conforming to the standards; tar is no longer specified by POSIX, and pax is its replacement. It’s just that pax never really caught on.)

It doesn’t matter where you extract the distribution file to: it’s best if you don’t put it anywhere special. If you aren’t an administrator, you should extract the file to somewhere in your home directory (Linux or UNIX-like systems) or to your My Documents directory (recent versions of Windows; if you’re using an older version, then you are an administrator, or at least have the same privileges, and can extract it anywhere). Some commands that you might use to extract it:

Generic UNIX/Linux
unlzma ick-0-29.pax.lzma
tar xvf ick-0-29.pax

or

bunzip2 ick-0-29.pax.bz2
tar xvf ick-0-29.pax

or

gunzip ick-0-29.pax.gz
tar xvf ick-0-29.pax

On most UNIX-based and Linux-based systems, tar will be available to unpack the installation files once they’ve been uncompressed with gunzip. (I’ve heard that some BSD systems have pax itself to decompress the files, although have not been able to verify this; some Linux distributions also have pax in their package managers. Both tar and pax should work fine, though.) gunzip is also likely to be available (and bunzip2 and unlzma are less likely, but use those versions if you have them to save on your bandwidth); if it isn’t, you will need to download a copy from the Internet.

Using GNU tar
tar xzvf ick-0-29.pax.gz

or

tar xqvf ick-0-29.pax.bz2

If you are using the GNU version of tar (which is very likely on Linux), you can combine the two steps into one as shown here, except when using the lzma-compressed version.

Using DJGPP
djtar -x ick-0-29.pax.gz

On a DOS system, you will have to install DJGPP anyway to be able to compile the distribution, and once you’ve done that you will be able to use DJGPP’s decompressing and unpacking utility to extract the files needed to install the distribution. (You will need to type this at the command line; on Windows 95 and later, try choosing Run... from the start menu then typing cmd (or command if that fails) in the dialog box that opens to get a command prompt, which you can exit by typing exit. After typing any command at a command line, press RET to tell the shell to execute that command.)

On Windows

If you’re running a Windows system, you could always try double-clicking on the ick-0-29.pax.gz file; probably renaming it to have the extension ‘.tgz’ is likely to give the best results. It’s quite possible that you’ll have a program installed that’s capable of decompressing and unpacking it. Unfortunately, I can’t guess what program that might be, so I can’t give you any instructions for using it.

Whatever method you use, you should end up with a directory created called ick-0.29; this is your main installation directory where all the processing done by the installation will be carried out. You will need to have that directory as the current directory during install (at the command prompt in all the operating systems I know, you can set the current directory by typing cd ick-0.29).


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