OWS (fake compressed archive)
OWS is a DOS program, and its native .OWS format. It is a prank that pretends to be a compressed archive utility, but isn't really.
It is credited to Okuyashi "Wilbur" Sakinaba, and described as a "Lossless Fractal Compression Program".
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Discussion
OWS produces absurdly small files.
It apparently stores just the original file name, and only "works" as long as the original file remains in its original state.
The "compression" utility is OWS.EXE. The documentation says that UNOWS.EXE is the main decompression utility, but no such file exists in the surviving v0.95β distribution. There is only SUNOWS.COM, which is supposedly a stripped-down version of UNOWS.EXE.
A self-extracting archive format may exist, but confirming that would require the missing UNOWS.EXE file.
Identification
OWS files made by v0.95β start with ASCII "OWS 0.95", followed by bytes 0x0d 0x0a 0x1a.
See also
- WIC (fake compressed archive) (similar prank)
