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Ancient - Modern decompressor for old data compression formats

This is a collection of decompression routines for old formats popular in the Amiga, Atari computers and some other systems from 80's and 90's as well as some that are currently used which were used in a some specific way in these old systems.

Even though most of these algorithms are still available for download, scavenging and using them might prove to be a challenge. Thus the purpose of this project is to:

For simple usage both a simple command line application as well as a simple API to use the decompressors are provided. The compression algorithm is automatically detected in most cases, however there are some corner cases where it is not entirely reliable due to weaknesses in the old format used. Please see the main.cpp and ancient.hpp to get an idea.

This code should compile cleanly on most C++17 capable compilers, and it is tested on clang and MSVC.

Some formats have incorporated weak password protection on them which can be bypassed. However, this project does not attempt to do any real cryptograpy.

Currently the project does not support any archival files nor self extracting executables.

Decompression algorithms provided:

There is some support for archival decompressors: However, these are not built in at the moment but the code can be as a reference

Special thanks go to Cholok for providing me references to many of the XPK-compressors.

BZIP2 tables for randomization have been included, they have BZIP2-license.

SASC/SHSC decompressors have been re-implemented by using the original HA code from Harri Hirvola as reference. (No code re-used)

Some of the rare Lzh-compressors have been re-implemented by using Lhasa as a reference. (No code re-used)

I'm slowly adding new stuff. If your favorite is not listed contact me and maybe I can add it.

Currently not planned to be supported:

Wishlist:

Feedback: tz at iki dot fi