lha and compressing more than 14 files at one go

[lionstorm]

Hi all,
I use lha to compress my files but problem is that with a lot of small files, lha compresses by block of 12 or 14 files and that takes ages for instance with beneath a steal sky.
I use the lha add from dopus magellan menu : lha -a -e -x a {d}...
I have plenty of ram so I just need to know which syntax should I add, without looking at the manual.
Lio

[Vincent]

I think this is a DOpus issue, not an lha issue.

I have this problem too.  When I first noticed it I thought it was weird, then over time it became annoying because it was slow, so I tried using the exact same command in cli and the files were added constantly.

I never found out the DOpus problem, but I'm very good at lha'ing in cli now :-)

[cgutjahr]

(I don't use Opus magellan, but Opus4 has exactly the same issue)

This is a Directory Opus issue. Opus limits the max. length of the command line it hands over to external programs to 256 (IIRC) chars. If the command line gets longer (e.g. because you used the {F} option and there are lots of files selected) Opus "splits" the command line and calls the external tool several times:

lha ...
lha ...

This is both annoying and slow (especially with LhA). The tool SaveText will allow you to avoid that problem. It only works with CLI commands that allow reading their input from a file (LhA does).

[lionstorm]

Thanks for the explanation so now I should figure out if savetext is working under magellan too.
Lio

[Vincent]

I couldn't get savetext to work with 5.11, but there was a little tip in the readme file that eliminated the problem.

Go to the "lha add" command in the "user menu" (if that's where you have it) and uncheck the box "recursive directories".  Now add "-r" into the command line itself.

I tested it with my PPaint drawer and it went through the whole directory structure without pausing once :-)

[todi]

you can also change the length in your dopus settings: CLI-START: Max. CLI

I have set it to 4000 ... works like a charm with a big bunch of files :-D

[lionstorm]

@ Todi :
thanks, mine was set to 512.
Lio

[lionstorm]

well basically increasing CLL to 4000 (even 2000) does not work at all under magellan 5.82 with the built in lha menu. It just exits without firther notice.
so now I have to try savetext.
Lio