Linux in a Nutshell, Third Edition

Name

bzip2

Synopsis

bzip2 [options] filenames

bunzip2 [options] filenames

bzcat [option] filenames

bzip2recover filenames

Description

File compression and decompression utility similar to gzip, but uses a different algorithm and encoding method to get better compression. bzip2 replaces each file in filenames with a compressed version of the file and with a .bz2 extension appended. bunzip2 decompresses each file compressed by bzip2 (ignoring other files, except to print a warning). bzcat decompresses all specified files to standard output, and bzip2recover is used to try to recover data from damaged files.

Options

--

End of options; treat all subsequent arguments as filenames.

- dig

Set block size to dig x 100KB when compressing, where dig is a single digit from 1 to 9.

-c, --stdout

Compress or decompress to standard output.

-d, --decompress

Force decompression.

-f, --force

Force overwrite of output files. Default is not to overwrite. Also forces breaking of hard links to files.

-k, --keep

Keep input files; don’t delete them.

-L, --license, -V, --version

Print license and version information and exit.

-q, --quiet

Quiet. Print only critical messages.

-s, --small

Use less memory, at the expense of speed.

-t, --test

Check the integrity of the files, but don’t actually compress them.

-v, --verbose

Verbose. Show the compression ratio for each file processed. Add more -v’s to increase the verbosity.

-z, --compress

Forces compression, even if invoked as bunzip2 or bzcat.

--repetitive-fast ...