June 2003
Beginner to intermediate
944 pages
43h 1m
English
compress
compress [options] files
Compress one or more files, replacing each with the compressed file of the same name with .Z appended. If no file is specified, compress standard input. Each file specified is compressed separately. compress ignores files that are symbolic links. See also gzip and bzip2, which are more commonly used now.
Limit the maximum number of bits.
Write output to standard output, not to a .Z file.
Decompress instead of compressing. Same as uncompress.
Force generation of an output file even if one already exists.
If any of the specified files is a directory, compress recursively.
Print compression statistics.
Print version and compilation information and then exit.
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