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    Maybe the other person has confused zipping a file (lossless) with jpeg compression (lossy) which can make test look ugly.
    – hookenz
    Commented May 13, 2011 at 2:54
  • I know that I once had compatibility problems for zip files, because the file format is used on all platforms...
    – jokoon
    Commented May 13, 2011 at 12:11
  • 1
    I've certainly experienced certain 'pathological' cases where both Winrar and WinXP's built-in facilities broke files (tens of thousands in a single zipfile). This was 4-5 years ago, and the only solution I could find at the time was to use 7-zip. As best I can remember, even 7-Zip couldn't successfully unzip files created by the other routines, suggesting the fault was in the zipping, not the unzipping. Obviously I opted to use 7-zip for both sides in the production system anyway.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented May 13, 2011 at 13:51
  • 1
    @jokoon: I'm not sure it's valid to speak of a file format...used on all platforms. There are quite a few different internal formats used in zip files, and it's always possible an archive could be created by one packing routine using a format that's imperfectly supported by some other routine that you happen to use at time of unpacking.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented May 13, 2011 at 13:55
  • @Fumble; But still, any decent archiver should catch the hash change and report the operation as a failure - not leave a broken file lying around.
    – Phoshi
    Commented May 14, 2011 at 10:34