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A comment on Why are tar.xz files 15x smaller when using Python's tar compared to macOS tar?. Parent comment

Re:Why are tar.xz files 15x smaller when using Python's tar ... by dmurray on Sunday March 14, 2021 @06:55PM (#26460327)
Is this really true? Surely they should be able to decompress it with virtual memory - you tell them exactly where to look for each operation. On the other hand, it will take you much longer to compress the file if your lookback window is larger than your available memory.
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Re:Why are tar.xz files 15x smaller when using Python's tar ... by jtvjan on Sunday March 14, 2021 @08:19PM (#26461060)
They're stream compressors, so they don't want to rely on being able to seek in the file. Even with swap, you'll have to cut it off somewhere; swap space isn't infinite.
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