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Linux Pocket Guide
book

Linux Pocket Guide

by Daniel J. Barrett
February 2004
Beginner content levelBeginner
200 pages
5h 40m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Linux Pocket Guide

File Compression and Packaging

gzip

Compress files with GNU Zip

gunzip

Uncompress GNU Zip files

compress

Compress files with traditional Unix compression

uncompress

Uncompress files with traditional Unix compression

zcat

Compress/uncompress file via standard input/output (gzip or compress)

bzip2

Compress files in BZip format

bunzip2

Uncompress BZip files

zip

Compress files in Windows Zip format

unzip

Uncompress Windows Zip files

uuencode

Convert file to uuencoded format

uudecode

Unconvert file from uuencoded format

Linux can compress files into a variety of formats and uncompress them. The most popular format is GNU Zip (gzip), whose compressed files are named with the .gz suffix. Other commonly found formats are classic Unix compression (.Z suffix), bzip2 compression (.bz2 suffix) and Zip files from Windows systems (.zip suffix).

A related technology involves converting binary files into textual formats, so they can (say) be transmitted within an email message. Nowadays this is done automatically with attachments and MIME tools, but we’ll cover the older uuencode and uudecode programs, which do still get used.

If you come across a format we don’t cover, such as Macintosh hqx/sit files, Arc, Zoo, and others, you can learn more at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/compression-faq/part1/section-2.html and http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-lw-comp.html

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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9780596806347Errata Page