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Ubuntu: Up and Running
book

Ubuntu: Up and Running

by Robin Nixon
April 2010
Beginner content levelBeginner
464 pages
12h 7m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from Ubuntu: Up and Running

File Compression

Ubuntu Linux supports various file compression formats, many of which will automatically open when accessed via the desktop. The main compression file types you are likely to encounter are listed in Table 7-6.

Table 7-6. Common file and compression types

File type

Compress with

Decompress with

.bz2

bzip2

bunzip2

.gz

gzip

gunzip

.tar

tar

tar

.zip

zip

unzip

.tar.gz or .tgz

gzip and tar

gunzip and tar

.tar.bz2

bzip2 and tar

bunzip2 and tar

Some of the compression programs will handle other types of files too, but generally each is best compressed and decompressed using its own programs. For example, to compress the file finances.doc using gzip, you could enter the following:

gzip finances.doc

A new file called finances.doc.gz will then be created containing the compressed file, and the original will be removed. To keep your original file when creating a compressed copy, use the -k option (for keep), like this:

gzip -k finances.doc

Likewise, you can compress a file with bzip2 in the same way using either of the following:

bzip2 finances.doc
bzip2 -k finances.doc

The first creates the compressed file finances.doc.bz2 and removes the original file, whereas the second creates a compressed file but also keeps the original in place.

Extracting Files

To extract files from a gzip archive, enter a command such as the following:

gunzip finances.doc.gz

This extracts the file finances.doc and then removes the archive file. You can similarly extract files from a bzip2 archive using a command such as this:

bunzip2 ...
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Publisher Resources

ISBN: 9781449382827Errata Page