Bin packing tool?

[Edward Roper <edro%wanfear.net@localhost>]

After recently  reading the  "making multi file  archive" thread  it got
me  wondering if  there  are  any standard  unix  bin packing[1]  tools?
Occasionally I  run into problems where  having a simple tool  along the
lines of sort, sed, etc. for solving this problem would be very helpful.
If there  aren't, are there  any features  in particular that  you would
find beneficial in such a  tool? Any suggestions on input/output formats
that would  keep it  simple enough  and general enough  to be  useful in
shell scripts?

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_packing