Gzip better than Bz2 ? Normal?

[Mike McCarty]

Donald Arseneau wrote:
> Mike McCarty <mike.mccarty at sbcglobal.net> writes:
> 
> 
>>There are lossless compression algorithms for which what you
>>said is not true.
> 
> 
> I can't believe that.  You can have a one-bit flag to indicate
> compression on or off.  If the compression algorithm produces
> more output than input, then you can save the flag "0" plus the 
> original file contents.  If the compression is an improvement then 
> you save the flag "1" plus the compressed data.  So successfully
> compressed files are one bit larger than they could have been,
> with the benefit that uncompressible files do not get bloated by
> more than one bit.

But you just *changed* algorithms. If you read carefully what
I wrote, in full, you'll see that I said that there is
*another* algorithm producing the same output, except one bit
longer, for files which actually get smaller, and one bit longer
than the original for files which get larger.

Read carefully what I wrote, and I think you'll see things in
a different light.

Surely you don't claim that one single algorithm can produce
different outputs when run successively with the same input?

Mike
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