Name
compress
Synopsis
compress [options
] [files
]
Reduces the size of one or more files
using adaptive Lempel- Ziv coding and move to
file
.Z
. Restore with
uncompress
or zcat
.
With a filename of -
, or with no
files
, compress
reads
standard input.
Unisys claims a patent on the algorithm used by
compress
. Today, gzip
is
generally preferred for file compression.
compress
doesn’t preserve
resource forks or HFS metadata when compressing files that contain
them.
Options
-
-b
n
Limit the number of bits in coding to
n
;n
is 9-16; 16 is the default. A lowern
produces a larger, less densely compressed file.-
-c
Write to the standard output (don’t change files).
-
-f
Compress unconditionally; i.e., don’t prompt before overwriting files. Also, compress files even if the resulting file would actually be larger.
-
-v
Print the resulting percentage of reduction for
files
.
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