I've noticed that making a .zip file self-executing only makes it ever so slightly bigger (the file). this means that the file contains all the info it contained earlier, but obviously compressed.

If I were to make a compressions algorithm (at least for text) I would make certain words replaced with a variable. this variable would not be stored in the zip file, but in winzip itself.

you see, winzip can be almost as large as it wants (well, maybe not 50+ MB), as long as it can compress it well.

doing this would surely help right? what am I missing?

also how does it compress images? I've never figured out how.


on a slightly seperate note, do most encryption algorithms increase, decrease or keep constant the size of the file. My encryption doubles to triples the file length.