Re: Script to conditionally find and compress files recursively

On Wed, 12 Jun 2024, Richard Kettlewell wrote:

Grant Taylor <gtaylor@tnetconsulting.net> writes:

On 6/11/24 01:53, J Newman wrote:

Any suggestions on how to proceed?

>
As others have said, it's very difficult to tell within the first five
seconds what the ultimate compression ratio will be.

>
Not just difficult but impossible in general: the input file could
change character in its second half, switching the overall result from
that that is (for example) a gzip win to an xz win.
>
>

This is true! The only thing I can imagine are parsing the file type, and from that file type, drawing conclusions about the compressability of the data, or doing a flawed statistical analysis, but as said, the end could be vastly different from the start.