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| .PU | |
| .TH bzip2 1 | |
| .SH NAME | |
| bzip2, bunzip2 \- a block-sorting file compressor, v1.0.8 | |
| .br | |
| bzcat \- decompresses files to stdout | |
| .br | |
| bzip2recover \- recovers data from damaged bzip2 files | |
| .SH SYNOPSIS | |
| .ll +8 | |
| .B bzip2 | |
| .RB [ " \-cdfkqstvzVL123456789 " ] | |
| [ | |
| .I "filenames \&..." | |
| ] | |
| .ll -8 | |
| .br | |
| .B bunzip2 | |
| .RB [ " \-fkvsVL " ] | |
| [ | |
| .I "filenames \&..." | |
| ] | |
| .br | |
| .B bzcat | |
| .RB [ " \-s " ] | |
| [ | |
| .I "filenames \&..." | |
| ] | |
| .br | |
| .B bzip2recover | |
| .I "filename" | |
| .SH DESCRIPTION | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| compresses files using the Burrows-Wheeler block sorting | |
| text compression algorithm, and Huffman coding. Compression is | |
| generally considerably better than that achieved by more conventional | |
| LZ77/LZ78-based compressors, and approaches the performance of the PPM | |
| family of statistical compressors. | |
| The command-line options are deliberately very similar to | |
| those of | |
| .I GNU gzip, | |
| but they are not identical. | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| expects a list of file names to accompany the | |
| command-line flags. Each file is replaced by a compressed version of | |
| itself, with the name "original_name.bz2". | |
| Each compressed file | |
| has the same modification date, permissions, and, when possible, | |
| ownership as the corresponding original, so that these properties can | |
| be correctly restored at decompression time. File name handling is | |
| naive in the sense that there is no mechanism for preserving original | |
| file names, permissions, ownerships or dates in filesystems which lack | |
| these concepts, or have serious file name length restrictions, such as | |
| MS-DOS. | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| and | |
| .I bunzip2 | |
| will by default not overwrite existing | |
| files. If you want this to happen, specify the \-f flag. | |
| If no file names are specified, | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| compresses from standard | |
| input to standard output. In this case, | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| will decline to | |
| write compressed output to a terminal, as this would be entirely | |
| incomprehensible and therefore pointless. | |
| .I bunzip2 | |
| (or | |
| .I bzip2 \-d) | |
| decompresses all | |
| specified files. Files which were not created by | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| will be detected and ignored, and a warning issued. | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| attempts to guess the filename for the decompressed file | |
| from that of the compressed file as follows: | |
| filename.bz2 becomes filename | |
| filename.bz becomes filename | |
| filename.tbz2 becomes filename.tar | |
| filename.tbz becomes filename.tar | |
| anyothername becomes anyothername.out | |
| If the file does not end in one of the recognised endings, | |
| .I .bz2, | |
| .I .bz, | |
| .I .tbz2 | |
| or | |
| .I .tbz, | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| complains that it cannot | |
| guess the name of the original file, and uses the original name | |
| with | |
| .I .out | |
| appended. | |
| As with compression, supplying no | |
| filenames causes decompression from | |
| standard input to standard output. | |
| .I bunzip2 | |
| will correctly decompress a file which is the | |
| concatenation of two or more compressed files. The result is the | |
| concatenation of the corresponding uncompressed files. Integrity | |
| testing (\-t) | |
| of concatenated | |
| compressed files is also supported. | |
| You can also compress or decompress files to the standard output by | |
| giving the \-c flag. Multiple files may be compressed and | |
| decompressed like this. The resulting outputs are fed sequentially to | |
| stdout. Compression of multiple files | |
| in this manner generates a stream | |
| containing multiple compressed file representations. Such a stream | |
| can be decompressed correctly only by | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| version 0.9.0 or | |
| later. Earlier versions of | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| will stop after decompressing | |
| the first file in the stream. | |
| .I bzcat | |
| (or | |
| .I bzip2 -dc) | |
| decompresses all specified files to | |
| the standard output. | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| will read arguments from the environment variables | |
| .I BZIP2 | |
| and | |
| .I BZIP, | |
| in that order, and will process them | |
| before any arguments read from the command line. This gives a | |
| convenient way to supply default arguments. | |
| Compression is always performed, even if the compressed | |
| file is slightly | |
| larger than the original. Files of less than about one hundred bytes | |
| tend to get larger, since the compression mechanism has a constant | |
| overhead in the region of 50 bytes. Random data (including the output | |
| of most file compressors) is coded at about 8.05 bits per byte, giving | |
| an expansion of around 0.5%. | |
| As a self-check for your protection, | |
| .I | |
| bzip2 | |
| uses 32-bit CRCs to | |
| make sure that the decompressed version of a file is identical to the | |
| original. This guards against corruption of the compressed data, and | |
| against undetected bugs in | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| (hopefully very unlikely). The | |
| chances of data corruption going undetected is microscopic, about one | |
| chance in four billion for each file processed. Be aware, though, that | |
| the check occurs upon decompression, so it can only tell you that | |
| something is wrong. It can't help you | |
| recover the original uncompressed | |
| data. You can use | |
| .I bzip2recover | |
| to try to recover data from | |
| damaged files. | |
| Return values: 0 for a normal exit, 1 for environmental problems (file | |
| not found, invalid flags, I/O errors, &c), 2 to indicate a corrupt | |
| compressed file, 3 for an internal consistency error (eg, bug) which | |
| caused | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| to panic. | |
| .SH OPTIONS | |
| .TP | |
| .B \-c --stdout | |
| Compress or decompress to standard output. | |
| .TP | |
| .B \-d --decompress | |
| Force decompression. | |
| .I bzip2, | |
| .I bunzip2 | |
| and | |
| .I bzcat | |
| are | |
| really the same program, and the decision about what actions to take is | |
| done on the basis of which name is used. This flag overrides that | |
| mechanism, and forces | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| to decompress. | |
| .TP | |
| .B \-z --compress | |
| The complement to \-d: forces compression, regardless of the | |
| invocation name. | |
| .TP | |
| .B \-t --test | |
| Check integrity of the specified file(s), but don't decompress them. | |
| This really performs a trial decompression and throws away the result. | |
| .TP | |
| .B \-f --force | |
| Force overwrite of output files. Normally, | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| will not overwrite | |
| existing output files. Also forces | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| to break hard links | |
| to files, which it otherwise wouldn't do. | |
| bzip2 normally declines to decompress files which don't have the | |
| correct magic header bytes. If forced (-f), however, it will pass | |
| such files through unmodified. This is how GNU gzip behaves. | |
| .TP | |
| .B \-k --keep | |
| Keep (don't delete) input files during compression | |
| or decompression. | |
| .TP | |
| .B \-s --small | |
| Reduce memory usage, for compression, decompression and testing. Files | |
| are decompressed and tested using a modified algorithm which only | |
| requires 2.5 bytes per block byte. This means any file can be | |
| decompressed in 2300k of memory, albeit at about half the normal speed. | |
| During compression, \-s selects a block size of 200k, which limits | |
| memory use to around the same figure, at the expense of your compression | |
| ratio. In short, if your machine is low on memory (8 megabytes or | |
| less), use \-s for everything. See MEMORY MANAGEMENT below. | |
| .TP | |
| .B \-q --quiet | |
| Suppress non-essential warning messages. Messages pertaining to | |
| I/O errors and other critical events will not be suppressed. | |
| .TP | |
| .B \-v --verbose | |
| Verbose mode -- show the compression ratio for each file processed. | |
| Further \-v's increase the verbosity level, spewing out lots of | |
| information which is primarily of interest for diagnostic purposes. | |
| .TP | |
| .B \-L --license -V --version | |
| Display the software version, license terms and conditions. | |
| .TP | |
| .B \-1 (or \-\-fast) to \-9 (or \-\-best) | |
| Set the block size to 100 k, 200 k .. 900 k when compressing. Has no | |
| effect when decompressing. See MEMORY MANAGEMENT below. | |
| The \-\-fast and \-\-best aliases are primarily for GNU gzip | |
| compatibility. In particular, \-\-fast doesn't make things | |
| significantly faster. | |
| And \-\-best merely selects the default behaviour. | |
| .TP | |
| .B \-- | |
| Treats all subsequent arguments as file names, even if they start | |
| with a dash. This is so you can handle files with names beginning | |
| with a dash, for example: bzip2 \-- \-myfilename. | |
| .TP | |
| .B \--repetitive-fast --repetitive-best | |
| These flags are redundant in versions 0.9.5 and above. They provided | |
| some coarse control over the behaviour of the sorting algorithm in | |
| earlier versions, which was sometimes useful. 0.9.5 and above have an | |
| improved algorithm which renders these flags irrelevant. | |
| .SH MEMORY MANAGEMENT | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| compresses large files in blocks. The block size affects | |
| both the compression ratio achieved, and the amount of memory needed for | |
| compression and decompression. The flags \-1 through \-9 | |
| specify the block size to be 100,000 bytes through 900,000 bytes (the | |
| default) respectively. At decompression time, the block size used for | |
| compression is read from the header of the compressed file, and | |
| .I bunzip2 | |
| then allocates itself just enough memory to decompress | |
| the file. Since block sizes are stored in compressed files, it follows | |
| that the flags \-1 to \-9 are irrelevant to and so ignored | |
| during decompression. | |
| Compression and decompression requirements, | |
| in bytes, can be estimated as: | |
| Compression: 400k + ( 8 x block size ) | |
| Decompression: 100k + ( 4 x block size ), or | |
| 100k + ( 2.5 x block size ) | |
| Larger block sizes give rapidly diminishing marginal returns. Most of | |
| the compression comes from the first two or three hundred k of block | |
| size, a fact worth bearing in mind when using | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| on small machines. | |
| It is also important to appreciate that the decompression memory | |
| requirement is set at compression time by the choice of block size. | |
| For files compressed with the default 900k block size, | |
| .I bunzip2 | |
| will require about 3700 kbytes to decompress. To support decompression | |
| of any file on a 4 megabyte machine, | |
| .I bunzip2 | |
| has an option to | |
| decompress using approximately half this amount of memory, about 2300 | |
| kbytes. Decompression speed is also halved, so you should use this | |
| option only where necessary. The relevant flag is -s. | |
| In general, try and use the largest block size memory constraints allow, | |
| since that maximises the compression achieved. Compression and | |
| decompression speed are virtually unaffected by block size. | |
| Another significant point applies to files which fit in a single block | |
| -- that means most files you'd encounter using a large block size. The | |
| amount of real memory touched is proportional to the size of the file, | |
| since the file is smaller than a block. For example, compressing a file | |
| 20,000 bytes long with the flag -9 will cause the compressor to | |
| allocate around 7600k of memory, but only touch 400k + 20000 * 8 = 560 | |
| kbytes of it. Similarly, the decompressor will allocate 3700k but only | |
| touch 100k + 20000 * 4 = 180 kbytes. | |
| Here is a table which summarises the maximum memory usage for different | |
| block sizes. Also recorded is the total compressed size for 14 files of | |
| the Calgary Text Compression Corpus totalling 3,141,622 bytes. This | |
| column gives some feel for how compression varies with block size. | |
| These figures tend to understate the advantage of larger block sizes for | |
| larger files, since the Corpus is dominated by smaller files. | |
| Compress Decompress Decompress Corpus | |
| Flag usage usage -s usage Size | |
| -1 1200k 500k 350k 914704 | |
| -2 2000k 900k 600k 877703 | |
| -3 2800k 1300k 850k 860338 | |
| -4 3600k 1700k 1100k 846899 | |
| -5 4400k 2100k 1350k 845160 | |
| -6 5200k 2500k 1600k 838626 | |
| -7 6100k 2900k 1850k 834096 | |
| -8 6800k 3300k 2100k 828642 | |
| -9 7600k 3700k 2350k 828642 | |
| .SH RECOVERING DATA FROM DAMAGED FILES | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| compresses files in blocks, usually 900kbytes long. Each | |
| block is handled independently. If a media or transmission error causes | |
| a multi-block .bz2 | |
| file to become damaged, it may be possible to | |
| recover data from the undamaged blocks in the file. | |
| The compressed representation of each block is delimited by a 48-bit | |
| pattern, which makes it possible to find the block boundaries with | |
| reasonable certainty. Each block also carries its own 32-bit CRC, so | |
| damaged blocks can be distinguished from undamaged ones. | |
| .I bzip2recover | |
| is a simple program whose purpose is to search for | |
| blocks in .bz2 files, and write each block out into its own .bz2 | |
| file. You can then use | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| \-t | |
| to test the | |
| integrity of the resulting files, and decompress those which are | |
| undamaged. | |
| .I bzip2recover | |
| takes a single argument, the name of the damaged file, | |
| and writes a number of files "rec00001file.bz2", | |
| "rec00002file.bz2", etc, containing the extracted blocks. | |
| The output filenames are designed so that the use of | |
| wildcards in subsequent processing -- for example, | |
| "bzip2 -dc rec*file.bz2 > recovered_data" -- processes the files in | |
| the correct order. | |
| .I bzip2recover | |
| should be of most use dealing with large .bz2 | |
| files, as these will contain many blocks. It is clearly | |
| futile to use it on damaged single-block files, since a | |
| damaged block cannot be recovered. If you wish to minimise | |
| any potential data loss through media or transmission errors, | |
| you might consider compressing with a smaller | |
| block size. | |
| .SH PERFORMANCE NOTES | |
| The sorting phase of compression gathers together similar strings in the | |
| file. Because of this, files containing very long runs of repeated | |
| symbols, like "aabaabaabaab ..." (repeated several hundred times) may | |
| compress more slowly than normal. Versions 0.9.5 and above fare much | |
| better than previous versions in this respect. The ratio between | |
| worst-case and average-case compression time is in the region of 10:1. | |
| For previous versions, this figure was more like 100:1. You can use the | |
| \-vvvv option to monitor progress in great detail, if you want. | |
| Decompression speed is unaffected by these phenomena. | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| usually allocates several megabytes of memory to operate | |
| in, and then charges all over it in a fairly random fashion. This means | |
| that performance, both for compressing and decompressing, is largely | |
| determined by the speed at which your machine can service cache misses. | |
| Because of this, small changes to the code to reduce the miss rate have | |
| been observed to give disproportionately large performance improvements. | |
| I imagine | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| will perform best on machines with very large caches. | |
| .SH CAVEATS | |
| I/O error messages are not as helpful as they could be. | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| tries hard to detect I/O errors and exit cleanly, but the details of | |
| what the problem is sometimes seem rather misleading. | |
| This manual page pertains to version 1.0.8 of | |
| .I bzip2. | |
| Compressed data created by this version is entirely forwards and | |
| backwards compatible with the previous public releases, versions | |
| 0.1pl2, 0.9.0, 0.9.5, 1.0.0, 1.0.1, 1.0.2 and above, but with the following | |
| exception: 0.9.0 and above can correctly decompress multiple | |
| concatenated compressed files. 0.1pl2 cannot do this; it will stop | |
| after decompressing just the first file in the stream. | |
| .I bzip2recover | |
| versions prior to 1.0.2 used 32-bit integers to represent | |
| bit positions in compressed files, so they could not handle compressed | |
| files more than 512 megabytes long. Versions 1.0.2 and above use | |
| 64-bit ints on some platforms which support them (GNU supported | |
| targets, and Windows). To establish whether or not bzip2recover was | |
| built with such a limitation, run it without arguments. In any event | |
| you can build yourself an unlimited version if you can recompile it | |
| with MaybeUInt64 set to be an unsigned 64-bit integer. | |
| .SH AUTHOR | |
| Julian Seward, [email protected]. | |
| https://sourceware.org/bzip2/ | |
| The ideas embodied in | |
| .I bzip2 | |
| are due to (at least) the following | |
| people: Michael Burrows and David Wheeler (for the block sorting | |
| transformation), David Wheeler (again, for the Huffman coder), Peter | |
| Fenwick (for the structured coding model in the original | |
| .I bzip, | |
| and many refinements), and Alistair Moffat, Radford Neal and Ian Witten | |
| (for the arithmetic coder in the original | |
| .I bzip). | |
| I am much | |
| indebted for their help, support and advice. See the manual in the | |
| source distribution for pointers to sources of documentation. Christian | |
| von Roques encouraged me to look for faster sorting algorithms, so as to | |
| speed up compression. Bela Lubkin encouraged me to improve the | |
| worst-case compression performance. | |
| Donna Robinson XMLised the documentation. | |
| The bz* scripts are derived from those of GNU gzip. | |
| Many people sent patches, helped | |
| with portability problems, lent machines, gave advice and were generally | |
| helpful. | |