Description of problem: 'compress' may decide not to compress a file (if it is too small to be compress'd, for example). The UNIX version warns you when this happens, the Linux version does not. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): ncompress-4.2.4-40 How reproducible: See below: Steps to Reproduce: 1. echo hi > foo 2. compress foo Actual results: % compress foo % Expected results: % compress foo foo: -- file unchanged % (This result is what Solaris does.) Additional info: Not a big deal, but again it's better if the user is warned.
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Thanks for report and sorry for late response, but I'm new maintainer of ncompress since yesterday. Actually many 'compress' messages are supressed by system intentionally - and are available only in verbose mode. That mode already does what you wish in RHEL-4 (or at least similar thing). %compress -v foo foo: No compression -- foo unchanged Therefore closing NOTABUG. Feel free to add any comments if you are not satisfied with that explanation.
Well, OK, though I would think this (verbose) output should be the default output to avoid confusing users.
That could lead to another bugzilla filled (I have following experience with such double-sided decisions from other packages). They would say that compress is more verbose than it should be - and that is no way to suppress it . Actually that's not true, because you can suppress -v by -q (that option is undocumented) or by redirection of stderr to /dev/null(another dirty way). So I would suggest you usage of alias in .bashrc for compress/uncompress with -v. As compress is almost stable utility(with (almost) dead upstream development), I don't think that's good idea to change default behaviour. The best way would be to add some sentences into -v option section of compress/uncompress man page and I would suggest that change to upstream to have it more clear for future RHEL releases.