- By default, ‘gzip’ keeps the original file name and time stamp in the
-compressed file. These are used when decompressing the file with the
-‘-N’ option. This is useful when the compressed file name was truncated
-or when the time stamp was not preserved after a file transfer.
-However, due to limitations in the current ‘gzip’ file format,
-fractional seconds are discarded. Also, time stamps must fall within
-the range 1970-01-01 00:00:00 through 2106-02-07 06:28:15 UTC, and hosts
-whose operating systems use 32-bit time stamps are further restricted to
-time stamps no later than 2038-01-19 03:14:07 UTC. The upper bounds
-assume the typical case where leap seconds are ignored.
+ By default, ‘gzip’ keeps the original file name in the compressed
+file. This can be useful when decompressing the file with ‘-N’ if the
+compressed file name was truncated after a file transfer.
+
+ If the original is a regular file, ‘gzip’ by default keeps its
+timestamp in the compressed file. This can be useful when decompressing
+the file with ‘-N’ if the timestamp was not preserved after a file
+transfer. However, due to limitations in the current ‘gzip’ file
+format, fractional seconds are discarded. Also, timestamps must fall
+within the range 1970-01-01 00:00:01 through 2106-02-07 06:28:15 UTC,
+and hosts whose operating systems use 32-bit timestamps are further
+restricted to timestamps no later than 2038-01-19 03:14:07 UTC. The
+upper bounds assume the typical case where leap seconds are ignored.