
 HA 0.98 Copyright (c) 1993 Harri Hirvola

 Permission is granted to any individual or institution to use, copy, 
 or redistribute this executable as long as it is not modified and is
 not sold for profit.

 HA COMES WITH NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED.
 IN NO EVENT WILL THE AUTHOR OF THIS SOFTWARE BE LIABLE OF ANY DAMAGE 
 RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE.


 About HA

     HA is a small file archiver utility. It's main goal is to offer 
     maximum compression without fancy addons. 

     This version of HA is not yet a finished product. It is still quite 
     slow and implementation of commands is somewhat incomplete and 
     inconsistent. I hope that someone finds it usefull even in it's 
     current form.


 Commands of MSDOS version

     General form of command line for HA is :

       HA <commandstring> archive [search pattern list]

     Commandstring starts with command character and includes optional
     switch characters.

     Available commands are:

     a[aemr012]  Add files matching search pattern to archive.

     e[aty]      Extract files matching search pattern from archive.

     x[aty]      Extract files matching search pattern from archive
                 using path information stored in archive.

     l[f]        List files currently in archive.
     
     d           Delete files matching search pattern from archive. 
                 If archive does not contain any files after deletion 
                 it is removed.


     f[aemr012]  Freshen files in archive. All files matching search 
                 pattern and newer than version already in archive 
                 are updated to archive.

     u[aemr012]  Update files to archive. All files matching search 
                 pattern that are newer than version already in 
                 archive or are not yet in archive are updated to archive.

     t           Test files in archive.


     Available switches are:

     0,1,2       Try compression method #. More than one can be specified.
                 Methods are:
                   0-CPY  Simple copying of files.    
                   1-ASC  Default method using sliding window dictionary 
                          followed by arithmetic coder. Offers quite good
                          compression on wide variety of filetypes.
                   2-HSC  Compression method based on finite contex model 
                          and arithmetic coder. Quite slow for binary data,
                          but offers very good compression especially for 
                          longer text files.

     y           Assume answer yes on all questions.

     t           Touch files when extracting. Sets file times to current 
                 machine time.

     r           Recurse through subdirectories while searching for files
                 matching search pattern.

     f           Full listing of stored file information.

     m           Move files when archiving. Files are removed from disk
                 after they are succesfully writen to archive.

     a           Set system specific file attributes when extracting files.
                 Find special files when archiving.

     e           Do not store pathname information.



 How to contact author

     Most (or only) reliable way to contact author is by email. 
     Email addresses currently functioning:

        Internet: hh@elsofter.sterna.pulp.nullnet.fi

        Fidonet:  2:220/851
