Purpose
The earliest use of archive formats was for backup, mobility, and archiving. Improved versions of archive formats added the ability to compress the data to consume less storage space and network bandwidth. There are multiple compression algorithms available to statistically compress data. Some kinds of data can be highly compressed and some kinds of data do not benefit from compression. Currently, archive formats are also used to package software files for distribution, installation, and execution.
Read more about this topic: Comparison Of Archive Formats, Features
Famous quotes containing the word purpose:
“Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life, has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind’s eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all. If it can be said to play the role of the watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.”
—Richard Dawkins (b. 1941)
“I don’t like to be idle; in fact, I often feel somewhat guilty unless there is some purpose to what I am doing. But spending a few hours—or a few days—in the woods, swamps or alongside a stream has never seemed to me a waste of time.... I derive special benefit from a period of solitude.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Some of my friends spoke as if I was coming to the woods on purpose to freeze myself.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)