File Compression and Packaging
gzip | Compress files with GNU Zip. |
gunzip | Uncompress GNU Zip files. |
bzip2 | Compress files in BZip format. |
bunzip2 | Uncompress BZip files. |
bzcat | Compress/uncompress BZip files via standard input/output. |
compress | Compress files with traditional Unix compression. |
uncompress | Uncompress files with traditional Unix compression. |
zcat | Compress/uncompress file
via standard input/output ( |
zip | Compress files in Windows Zip format. |
unzip | Uncompress Windows Zip files. |
| Package multiple files into a single file. |
The Terminal has commands to compress files into a variety of
formats and uncompress them. The most popular formats are GNU Zip
(gzip
), whose compressed files are
named with the .gz suffix, and BZip,
which uses the .bz2 suffix. Other
common formats include Zip files from Windows systems (.zip suffix) and occasionally, classic Unix
compression (.Z suffix).
If you come across a format we don’t cover, such as Macintosh sit files, Arc, Zoo, rar, and others, you can head over to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_archive_formats to learn more.
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