File sizes will not always be reported as being the same size when transferred from somewhere else. Partly it has more to do with your OS (Windows, Linux, etc.) than anything. Different OS have different ways of determining the file size. You can even change how it is displayed in some cases, such as, “actual size on disk”, “reported file size”, “download size”, “upload size” etc.
Also on some systems 1,000 bits are reported as being 1K in size, when in reality 1K is 1,024 bits.
So minor differences in file size cannot be relied on for determining if something is wrong, at least on downloads. However anti-virus routines will look for certain files that have changed size, such as an .exe
The best method for testing files/packages is by using MD5sums, or something similar.
Hope This helped.
Have a great day!
ForumJoiner,
The zip file is 1.44 MB and the tar.gz file is 1.2 MB.
Why?
Because these are different archiving formats. Even with the same archiving program using the same archive format, you can specify different settings (for example, you may compress to maximize extraction speed or to minimize the size of the archive file), which will result in a different archive size…
Tarballs (tar.gz format) are more efficient because the files are compressed as a whole. The cost is that to extract one file (i.e. wp-config.php), your computer has to read through every file in the archive. The benefit is that the compression is more efficient, which is why the file size is smaller than ZIP.
The file sizes listed on the WordPress download page are just plain wrong. They should be 1.5MB and 1.3MB or 1.4MiB and 1.2MiB, not 1.2MB and 1.0MB. 1 kilobyte == 1000 bytes, 1 kibibyte == 1024 bytes, even though Windows says a kibibyte is a kilobyte.
