Does PKZIP/SecureZIP support packed data or signed decimals in text mode?
If a data base file is being compressed in text mode and has packed data fields, the results are unpredictable for the fields that are packed. Some of the data may also represent internal control characters such as Line Feed, etc. PKZIP/SecureZIP does record processing and does not work in field mode. Also, if the database has signed decimal fields the result may also be unpredictable since the decimal sign byte is not represented correctly when translated to ASCII. But in this case if the data in these fields are not important, at least the bytes can be predictable for use in some application.
