NAME¶

SYNOPSIS¶

DESCRIPTION¶

Lzip is a lossless data compressor with a user interface similar to the one of gzip or bzip2. Lzip can compress about as fast as gzip (lzip -0) or compress most files more than bzip2 (lzip -9). Decompression speed is intermediate between gzip and bzip2. Lzip is better than gzip and bzip2 from a data recovery perspective. Lzip has been designed, written and tested with great care to replace gzip and bzip2 as the standard general-purpose compressed format for unix-like systems.

Pdlzip is also able to decompress legacy lzma-alone (.lzma) files. Lzma-alone is a very bad format; it is essentially a raw LZMA stream. If you keep any lzma-alone files, it is advisable to recompress them to lzip format. Lziprecover can convert some lzma-alone files to lzip format without recompressing.

OPTIONS¶

-h, --help

display this help and exit

-V, --version

output version information and exit

-a, --trailing-error

exit with error status if trailing data

-c, --stdout

write to standard output, keep input files

-d, --decompress

decompress

-f, --force

overwrite existing output files

-F, --recompress

force re-compression of compressed files

-k, --keep

keep (don't delete) input files

-m, --match-length=<bytes>

set match length limit in bytes [36]

-o, --output=<file>

if reading standard input, write to <file>

-q, --quiet

suppress all messages

-s, --dictionary-size=<bytes>

set dictionary size limit in bytes [8 MiB]

-t, --test

test compressed file integrity

-v, --verbose

be verbose (a 2nd -v gives more)

-0 .. -9

set compression level [default 6]

--fast

alias for -0

--best

alias for -9

--loose-trailing

allow trailing data seeming corrupt header

If no file names are given, or if a file is '-', pdlzip compresses or decompresses from standard input to standard output. Numbers may be followed by a multiplier: k = kB = 10^3 = 1000, Ki = KiB = 2^10 = 1024, M = 10^6, Mi = 2^20, G = 10^9, Gi = 2^30, etc... Dictionary sizes 12 to 27 are interpreted as powers of two, meaning 2^12 to 2^27 bytes.

The bidimensional parameter space of LZMA can't be mapped to a linear scale optimal for all files. If your files are large, very repetitive, etc, you may need to use the --dictionary-size and --match-length options directly to achieve optimal performance. For example, -9m64 usually compresses executables more (and faster) than -9.

Exit status: 0 for a normal exit, 1 for environmental problems (file not found, invalid flags, I/O errors, etc), 2 to indicate a corrupt or invalid input file, 3 for an internal consistency error (eg, bug) which caused pdlzip to panic.

REPORTING BUGS¶

COPYRIGHT¶