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GZIP !!!GZIP NAME SYNOPSIS DESCRIPTION OPTIONS ADVANCED USAGE ENVIRONMENT SEE ALSO DIAGNOSTICS CAVEATS BUGS COPYRIGHT NOTICE ---- !!NAME gzip, gunzip, zcat - compress or expand files !!SYNOPSIS __gzip__ [[ __-acdfhlLnNrtvV19__ ] [[__-S suffix__] [[ ''name ...'' ]__ gunzip__ [[ __-acfhlLnNrtvV__ ] [[__-S suffix__] [[ ''name ...'' ]__ zcat__ [[ __-fhLV__ ] [[ ''name ...'' ] !!DESCRIPTION ''Gzip'' reduces the size of the named files using Lempel-Ziv coding (LZ77). Whenever possible, each file is replaced by one with the extension __.gz,__ while keeping the same ownership modes, access and modification times. (The default extension is __-gz__ for VMS, __z__ for MSDOS, OS/2 FAT, Windows NT FAT and Atari.) If no files are specified, or if a file name is __Gzip'' will only attempt to compress regular files. In particular, it will ignore symbolic links. If the compressed file name is too long for its file system, ''gzip'' truncates it. ''Gzip'' attempts to truncate only the parts of the file name longer than 3 characters. (A part is delimited by dots.) If the name consists of small parts only, the longest parts are truncated. For example, if file names are limited to 14 characters, gzip.msdos.exe is compressed to gzi.msd.exe.gz. Names are not truncated on systems which do not have a limit on file name length. By default, ''gzip'' keeps the original file name and timestamp in the compressed file. These are used when decompressing the file with the __-N__ option. This is useful when the compressed file name was truncated or when the time stamp was not preserved after a file transfer. Compressed files can be restored to their original form using ''gzip -d'' or ''gunzip'' or ''zcat.'' If the original name saved in the compressed file is not suitable for its file system, a new name is constructed from the original one to make it legal. ''gunzip'' takes a list of files on its command line and replaces each file whose name ends with .gz, -gz, .z, -z, _z or .Z and which begins with the correct magic number with an uncompressed file without the original extension. ''gunzip'' also recognizes the special extensions __.tgz__ and __.taz__ as shorthands for __.tar.gz__ and __.tar.Z__ respectively. When compressing, ''gzip'' uses the __.tgz__ extension if necessary instead of truncating a file with a __.tar__ extension. ''gunzip'' can currently decompress files created by ''gzip, zip, compress, compress -H'' or ''pack.'' The detection of the input format is automatic. When using the first two formats, ''gunzip'' checks a 32 bit CRC. For ''pack, gunzip'' checks the uncompressed length. The standard ''compress'' format was not designed to allow consistency checks. However ''gunzip'' is sometimes able to detect a bad .Z file. If you get an error when uncompressing a .Z file, do not assume that the .Z file is correct simply because the standard ''uncompress'' does not complain. This generally means that the standard ''uncompress'' does not check its input, and happily generates garbage output. The SCO compress -H format (lzh compression method) does not include a CRC but also allows some consistency checks. Files created by ''zip'' can be uncompressed by gzip only if they have a single member compressed with the 'deflation' method. This feature is only intended to help conversion of tar.zip files to the tar.gz format. To extract zip files with several members, use ''unzip'' instead of ''gunzip.'' ''zcat'' is identical to ''gunzip'' __-c.__ (On some systems, ''zcat'' may be installed as ''gzcat'' to preserve the original link to ''compress.) zcat'' uncompresses either a list of files on the command line or its standard input and writes the uncompressed data on standard output. ''zcat'' will uncompress files that have the correct magic number whether they have a __.gz__ suffix or not. ''Gzip'' uses the Lempel-Ziv algorithm used in ''zip'' and PKZIP. The amount of compression obtained depends on the size of the input and the distribution of common substrings. Typically, text such as source code or English is reduced by 60-70%. Compression is generally much better than that achieved by LZW (as used in ''compress''), Huffman coding (as used in ''pack''), or adaptive Huffman coding (''compact''). Compression is always performed, even if the compressed file is slightly larger than the original. The worst case expansion is a few bytes for the gzip file header, plus 5 bytes every 32K block, or an expansion ratio of 0.015% for large files. Note that the actual number of used disk blocks almost never increases. ''gzip'' preserves the mode, ownership and timestamps of files when compressing or decompressing. !!OPTIONS __-a --ascii__ Ascii text mode: convert end-of-lines using local conventions. This option is supported only on some non-Unix systems. For MSDOS, CR LF is converted to LF when compressing, and LF is converted to CR LF when decompressing. __-c --stdout --to-stdout__ Write output on standard output; keep original files unchanged. If there are several input files, the output consists of a sequence of independently compressed members. To obtain better compression, concatenate all input files before compressing them. __-d --decompress --uncompress__ Decompress. __-f --force__ Force compression or decompression even if the file has multiple links or the corresponding file already exists, or if the compressed data is read from or written to a terminal. If the input data is not in a format recognized by ''gzip,'' and if the option --stdout is also given, copy the input data without change to the standard ouput: let ''zcat'' behave as ''cat.'' If __-f__ is not given, and when not running in the background, ''gzip'' prompts to verify whether an existing file should be overwritten. __-h --help__ Display a help screen and quit. __-l --list__ For each compressed file, list the following fields: compressed size: size of the compressed file uncompressed size: size of the uncompressed file ratio: compression ratio (0.0% if unknown) uncompressed_name: name of the uncompressed file The uncompressed size is given as -1 for files not in gzip format, such as compressed .Z files. To get the uncompressed size for such a file, you can use: zcat file.Z | wc -c In combination with the --verbose option, the following fields are also displayed: method: compression method crc: the 32-bit CRC of the uncompressed data date The compression methods currently supported are deflate, compress, lzh (SCO compress -H) and pack. The crc is given as ffffffff for a file not in gzip format. With --name, the uncompressed name, date and time are those stored within the compress file if present. With --verbose, the size totals and compression ratio for all files is also displayed, unless some sizes are unknown. With --quiet, the title and totals lines are not displayed. __-L --license__ Display the ''gzip'' license and quit. __-n --no-name__ When compressing, do not save the original file name and time stamp by default. (The original name is always saved if the name had to be truncated.) When decompressing, do not restore the original file name if present (remove only the ''gzip'' suffix from the compressed file name) and do not restore the original time stamp if present (copy it from the compressed file). This option is the default when decompressing. __-N --name__ When compressing, always save the original file name and time stamp; this is the default. When decompressing, restore the original file name and time stamp if present. This option is useful on systems which have a limit on file name length or when the time stamp has been lost after a file transfer. __-q --quiet__ Suppress all warnings. __-r --recursive__ Travel the directory structure recursively. If any of the file names specified on the command line are directories, ''gzip'' will descend into the directory and compress all the files it finds there (or decompress them in the case of ''gunzip'' ). __-S .suf --suffix .suf__ Use suffix .suf instead of .gz. Any suffix can be given, but suffixes other than .z and .gz should be avoided to avoid confusion when files are transferred to other systems. A null suffix forces gunzip to try decompression on all given files regardless of suffix, as in: gunzip -S Previous versions of gzip used the .z suffix. This was changed to avoid a conflict with pack(1)''.'' __-t --test__ Test. Check the compressed file integrity. __-v --verbose__ Verbose. Display the name and percentage reduction for each file compressed or decompressed. __-V --version__ Version. Display the version number and compilation options then quit. __-# --fast --best__ Regulate the speed of compression using the specified digit ''#'', where __-1__ or __--fast__ indicates the fastest compression method (less compression) and __-9__ or __--best__ indicates the slowest compression method (best compression). The default compression level is __-6__ (that is, biased towards high compression at expense of speed). !!ADVANCED USAGE Multiple compressed files can be concatenated. In this case, ''gunzip'' will extract all members at once. For example: gzip -c file1 Then gunzip -c foo is equivalent to cat file1 file2 In case of damage to one member of a .gz file, other members can still be recovered (if the damaged member is removed). However, you can get better compression by compressing all members at once: cat file1 file2 | gzip compresses better than gzip -c file1 file2 If you want to recompress concatenated files to get better compression, do: gzip -cd old.gz | gzip If a compressed file consists of several members, the uncompressed size and CRC reported by the --list option applies to the last member only. If you need the uncompressed size for all members, you can use: gzip -cd file.gz | wc -c If you wish to create a single archive file with multiple members so that members can later be extracted independently, use an archiver such as tar or zip. GNU tar supports the -z option to invoke gzip transparently. gzip is designed as a complement to tar, not as a replacement. !!ENVIRONMENT The environment variable __GZIP__ can hold a set of default options for ''gzip.'' These options are interpreted first and can be overwritten by explicit command line parameters. For example: for sh: GZIP= '' On Vax/VMS, the name of the environment variable is GZIP_OPT, to avoid a conflict with the symbol set for invocation of the program. !!SEE ALSO znew(1), zcmp(1), zmore(1), zforce(1), gzexe(1), zip(1), unzip(1), compress(1), pack(1), compact(1) The ''gzip'' file format is specified in P. Deutsch, GZIP file format specification version 4.3, ____, Internet RFC 1952 (May 1996). The ''zip'' deflation format is specified in P. Deutsch, DEFLATE Compressed Data Format Specification version 1.3, ____, Internet RFC 1951 (May 1996). !!DIAGNOSTICS Exit status is normally 0; if an error occurs, exit status is 1. If a warning occurs, exit status is 2. Usage: gzip [[-cdfhlLnNrtvV19] [[-S suffix] [[file ...] Invalid options were specified on the command line. ''file'': not in gzip format The file specified to ''gunzip'' has not been compressed. ''file'': Corrupt input. Use zcat to recover some data. The compressed file has been damaged. The data up to the point of failure can be recovered using zcat ''file'' '' ''file'': compressed with ''xx'' bits, can only handle ''yy'' bits ''File'' was compressed (using LZW) by a program that could deal with more ''bits'' than the decompress code on this machine. Recompress the file with gzip, which compresses better and uses less memory. ''file'': already has .gz suffix -- no change The file is assumed to be already compressed. Rename the file and try again. ''file'' already exists; do you wish to overwrite (y or n)? Respond gunzip: corrupt input A SIGSEGV violation was detected which usually means that the input file has been corrupted. ''xx.x%'' Percentage of the input saved by compression. (Relevant only for __-v__ and __-l__.) -- not a regular file or directory: ignored When the input file is not a regular file or directory, (e.g. a symbolic link, socket, FIFO, device file), it is left unaltered. -- has ''xx'' other links: unchanged The input file has links; it is left unchanged. See ln(1) for more information. Use the __-f__ flag to force compression of multiply-linked files. !!CAVEATS When writing compressed data to a tape, it is generally necessary to pad the output with zeroes up to a block boundary. When the data is read and the whole block is passed to ''gunzip'' for decompression, ''gunzip'' detects that there is extra trailing garbage after the compressed data and emits a warning by default. You have to use the --quiet option to suppress the warning. This option can be set in the __GZIP__ environment variable as in: for sh: GZIP= __ In the above example, gzip is invoked implicitly by the -z option of GNU tar. Make sure that the same block size (-b option of tar) is used for reading and writing compressed data on tapes. (This example assumes you are using the GNU version of tar.) !!BUGS The gzip format represents the the input size modulo 2^32, so the --list option reports incorrect uncompressed sizes and compression ratios for uncompressed files 4 GB and larger. To work around this problem, you can use the following command to discover a large uncompressed file's true size: zcat file.gz | wc -c The --list option reports sizes as -1 and crc as ffffffff if the compressed file is on a non seekable media. In some rare cases, the --best option gives worse compression than the default compression level (-6). On some highly redundant files, ''compress'' compresses better than ''gzip.'' !!COPYRIGHT NOTICE Copyright 1998, 1999, 2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc. Copyright 1992, 1993 Jean-loup Gailly Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the Foundation. ----
7 pages link to
gunzip(1)
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