--- /dev/null
+.PU
+.TH GZIP 1 local
+.SH NAME
+gzip, gunzip, zcat \- compress or expand files
+.SH SYNOPSIS
+.ll +8
+.B gzip
+.RB [ " \-acdfhlLnNrtvV19 " ]
+.RB [ \-S\ suffix ]
+[
+.I "name \&..."
+]
+.ll -8
+.br
+.B gunzip
+.RB [ " \-acfhlLnNrtvV " ]
+.RB [ \-S\ suffix ]
+[
+.I "name \&..."
+]
+.br
+.B zcat
+.RB [ " \-fhLV " ]
+[
+.I "name \&..."
+]
+.SH DESCRIPTION
+.I Gzip
+reduces the size of the named files using Lempel-Ziv coding (LZ77).
+Whenever possible,
+each file is replaced by one with the extension
+.B "\&.gz,"
+while keeping the same ownership modes, access and modification times.
+(The default extension is
+.B "\-gz"
+for VMS,
+.B "z"
+for MSDOS, OS/2 FAT, Windows NT FAT and Atari.)
+If no files are specified, or if a file name is "-", the standard input is
+compressed to the standard output.
+.I Gzip
+will only attempt to compress regular files.
+In particular, it will ignore symbolic links.
+.PP
+If the compressed file name is too long for its file system,
+.I gzip
+truncates it.
+.I Gzip
+attempts to truncate only the parts of the file name longer than 3 characters.
+(A part is delimited by dots.) If the name consists of small parts only,
+the longest parts are truncated. For example, if file names are limited
+to 14 characters, gzip.msdos.exe is compressed to gzi.msd.exe.gz.
+Names are not truncated on systems which do not have a limit on file name
+length.
+.PP
+By default,
+.I gzip
+keeps the original file name and timestamp in the compressed file. These
+are used when decompressing the file with the
+.B \-N
+option. This is useful when the compressed file name was truncated or
+when the time stamp was not preserved after a file transfer.
+.PP
+Compressed files can be restored to their original form using
+.I gzip -d
+or
+.I gunzip
+or
+.I zcat.
+If the original name saved in the compressed file is not suitable for its
+file system, a new name is constructed from the original one to make it
+legal.
+.PP
+.I gunzip
+takes a list of files on its command line and replaces each
+file whose name ends with .gz, -gz, .z, -z, _z or .Z
+and which begins with the correct magic number with an uncompressed
+file without the original extension.
+.I gunzip
+also recognizes the special extensions
+.B "\&.tgz"
+and
+.B "\&.taz"
+as shorthands for
+.B "\&.tar.gz"
+and
+.B "\&.tar.Z"
+respectively.
+When compressing,
+.I gzip
+uses the
+.B "\&.tgz"
+extension if necessary instead of truncating a file with a
+.B "\&.tar"
+extension.
+.PP
+.I gunzip
+can currently decompress files created by
+.I gzip, zip, compress, compress -H
+or
+.I pack.
+The detection of the input format is automatic. When using
+the first two formats,
+.I gunzip
+checks a 32 bit CRC. For
+.I pack, gunzip
+checks the uncompressed length. The standard
+.I compress
+format was not designed to allow consistency checks. However
+.I gunzip
+is sometimes able to detect a bad .Z file. If you get an error
+when uncompressing a .Z file, do not assume that the .Z file is
+correct simply because the standard
+.I uncompress
+does not complain. This generally means that the standard
+.I uncompress
+does not check its input, and happily generates garbage output.
+The SCO compress -H format (lzh compression method) does not include a CRC
+but also allows some consistency checks.
+.PP
+Files created by
+.I zip
+can be uncompressed by gzip only if they have a single member compressed
+with the 'deflation' method. This feature is only intended to help
+conversion of tar.zip files to the tar.gz format. To extract zip files
+with several members, use
+.I unzip
+instead of
+.I gunzip.
+.PP
+.I zcat
+is identical to
+.I gunzip
+.B \-c.
+(On some systems,
+.I zcat
+may be installed as
+.I gzcat
+to preserve the original link to
+.I compress.)
+.I zcat
+uncompresses either a list of files on the command line or its
+standard input and writes the uncompressed data on standard output.
+.I zcat
+will uncompress files that have the correct magic number whether
+they have a
+.B "\&.gz"
+suffix or not.
+.PP
+.I Gzip
+uses the Lempel-Ziv algorithm used in
+.I zip
+and PKZIP.
+The amount of compression obtained depends on the size of the
+input and the distribution of common substrings.
+Typically, text such as source code or English
+is reduced by 60\-70%.
+Compression is generally much better than that achieved by
+LZW (as used in
+.IR compress ),
+Huffman coding (as used in
+.IR pack ),
+or adaptive Huffman coding
+.RI ( compact ).
+.PP
+Compression is always performed, even if the compressed file is
+slightly larger than the original. The worst case expansion is
+a few bytes for the gzip file header, plus 5 bytes every 32K block,
+or an expansion ratio of 0.015% for large files. Note that the actual
+number of used disk blocks almost never increases.
+.I gzip
+preserves the mode, ownership and timestamps of files when compressing
+or decompressing.
+
+.SH OPTIONS
+.TP
+.B \-a --ascii
+Ascii text mode: convert end-of-lines using local conventions. This option
+is supported only on some non-Unix systems. For MSDOS, CR LF is converted
+to LF when compressing, and LF is converted to CR LF when decompressing.
+.TP
+.B \-c --stdout --to-stdout
+Write output on standard output; keep original files unchanged.
+If there are several input files, the output consists of a sequence of
+independently compressed members. To obtain better compression,
+concatenate all input files before compressing them.
+.TP
+.B \-d --decompress --uncompress
+Decompress.
+.TP
+.B \-f --force
+Force compression or decompression even if the file has multiple links
+or the corresponding file already exists, or if the compressed data
+is read from or written to a terminal. If the input data is not in
+a format recognized by
+.I gzip,
+and if the option --stdout is also given, copy the input data without change
+to the standard ouput: let
+.I zcat
+behave as
+.I cat.
+If
+.B \-f
+is not given,
+and when not running in the background,
+.I gzip
+prompts to verify whether an existing file should be overwritten.
+.TP
+.B \-h --help
+Display a help screen and quit.
+.TP
+.B \-l --list
+For each compressed file, list the following fields:
+
+ compressed size: size of the compressed file
+ uncompressed size: size of the uncompressed file
+ ratio: compression ratio (0.0% if unknown)
+ uncompressed_name: name of the uncompressed file
+
+The uncompressed size is given as -1 for files not in gzip format,
+such as compressed .Z files. To get the uncompressed size for such a file,
+you can use:
+
+ zcat file.Z | wc -c
+
+In combination with the --verbose option, the following fields are also
+displayed:
+
+ method: compression method
+ crc: the 32-bit CRC of the uncompressed data
+ date & time: time stamp for the uncompressed file
+
+The compression methods currently supported are deflate, compress, lzh
+(SCO compress -H) and pack. The crc is given as ffffffff for a file
+not in gzip format.
+
+With --name, the uncompressed name, date and time are
+those stored within the compress file if present.
+
+With --verbose, the size totals and compression ratio for all files
+is also displayed, unless some sizes are unknown. With --quiet,
+the title and totals lines are not displayed.
+.TP
+.B \-L --license
+Display the
+.I gzip
+license and quit.
+.TP
+.B \-n --no-name
+When compressing, do not save the original file name and time stamp by
+default. (The original name is always saved if the name had to be
+truncated.) When decompressing, do not restore the original file name
+if present (remove only the
+.I gzip
+suffix from the compressed file name) and do not restore the original
+time stamp if present (copy it from the compressed file). This option
+is the default when decompressing.
+.TP
+.B \-N --name
+When compressing, always save the original file name and time stamp; this
+is the default. When decompressing, restore the original file name and
+time stamp if present. This option is useful on systems which have
+a limit on file name length or when the time stamp has been lost after
+a file transfer.
+.TP
+.B \-q --quiet
+Suppress all warnings.
+.TP
+.B \-r --recursive
+Travel the directory structure recursively. If any of the file names
+specified on the command line are directories,
+.I gzip
+will descend into the directory and compress all the files it finds there
+(or decompress them in the case of
+.I gunzip
+).
+.TP
+.B \-S .suf --suffix .suf
+Use suffix .suf instead of .gz. Any suffix can be given, but suffixes
+other than .z and .gz should be avoided to avoid confusion when files
+are transferred to other systems. A null suffix forces gunzip to try
+decompression on all given files regardless of suffix, as in:
+
+ gunzip -S "" * (*.* for MSDOS)
+
+Previous versions of gzip used
+the .z suffix. This was changed to avoid a conflict with
+.IR pack "(1)".
+.TP
+.B \-t --test
+Test. Check the compressed file integrity.
+.TP
+.B \-v --verbose
+Verbose. Display the name and percentage reduction for each file compressed
+or decompressed.
+.TP
+.B \-V --version
+Version. Display the version number and compilation options then quit.
+.TP
+.B \-# --fast --best
+Regulate the speed of compression using the specified digit
+.IR # ,
+where
+.B \-1
+or
+.B \-\-fast
+indicates the fastest compression method (less compression)
+and
+.B \-9
+or
+.B \-\-best
+indicates the slowest compression method (best compression).
+The default compression level is
+.BR \-6
+(that is, biased towards high compression at expense of speed).
+.SH "ADVANCED USAGE"
+Multiple compressed files can be concatenated. In this case,
+.I gunzip
+will extract all members at once. For example:
+
+ gzip -c file1 > foo.gz
+ gzip -c file2 >> foo.gz
+
+Then
+ gunzip -c foo
+
+is equivalent to
+
+ cat file1 file2
+
+In case of damage to one member of a .gz file, other members can
+still be recovered (if the damaged member is removed). However,
+you can get better compression by compressing all members at once:
+
+ cat file1 file2 | gzip > foo.gz
+
+compresses better than
+
+ gzip -c file1 file2 > foo.gz
+
+If you want to recompress concatenated files to get better compression, do:
+
+ gzip -cd old.gz | gzip > new.gz
+
+If a compressed file consists of several members, the uncompressed
+size and CRC reported by the --list option applies to the last member
+only. If you need the uncompressed size for all members, you can use:
+
+ gzip -cd file.gz | wc -c
+
+If you wish to create a single archive file with multiple members so
+that members can later be extracted independently, use an archiver
+such as tar or zip. GNU tar supports the -z option to invoke gzip
+transparently. gzip is designed as a complement to tar, not as a
+replacement.
+.SH "ENVIRONMENT"
+The environment variable
+.B GZIP
+can hold a set of default options for
+.I gzip.
+These options are interpreted first and can be overwritten by
+explicit command line parameters. For example:
+ for sh: GZIP="-8v --name"; export GZIP
+ for csh: setenv GZIP "-8v --name"
+ for MSDOS: set GZIP=-8v --name
+
+On Vax/VMS, the name of the environment variable is GZIP_OPT, to
+avoid a conflict with the symbol set for invocation of the program.
+.SH "SEE ALSO"
+znew(1), zcmp(1), zmore(1), zforce(1), gzexe(1), zip(1), unzip(1), compress(1),
+pack(1), compact(1)
+.SH "DIAGNOSTICS"
+Exit status is normally 0;
+if an error occurs, exit status is 1. If a warning occurs, exit status is 2.
+.PP
+Usage: gzip [-cdfhlLnNrtvV19] [-S suffix] [file ...]
+.in +8
+Invalid options were specified on the command line.
+.in -8
+.IR file :
+not in gzip format
+.in +8
+The file specified to
+.I gunzip
+has not been compressed.
+.in -8
+.IR file:
+Corrupt input. Use zcat to recover some data.
+.in +8
+The compressed file has been damaged. The data up to the point of failure
+can be recovered using
+.in +8
+zcat file > recover
+.in -16
+.IR file :
+compressed with
+.I xx
+bits, can only handle
+.I yy
+bits
+.in +8
+.I File
+was compressed (using LZW) by a program that could deal with
+more
+.I bits
+than the decompress code on this machine.
+Recompress the file with gzip, which compresses better and uses
+less memory.
+.in -8
+.IR file :
+already has .gz suffix -- no change
+.in +8
+The file is assumed to be already compressed.
+Rename the file and try again.
+.in -8
+.I file
+already exists; do you wish to overwrite (y or n)?
+.in +8
+Respond "y" if you want the output file to be replaced; "n" if not.
+.in -8
+gunzip: corrupt input
+.in +8
+A SIGSEGV violation was detected which usually means that the input file has
+been corrupted.
+.in -8
+.I "xx.x%"
+.in +8
+Percentage of the input saved by compression.
+(Relevant only for
+.BR \-v
+and
+.BR \-l \.)
+.in -8
+-- not a regular file or directory: ignored
+.in +8
+When the input file is not a regular file or directory,
+(e.g. a symbolic link, socket, FIFO, device file), it is
+left unaltered.
+.in -8
+-- has
+.I xx
+other links: unchanged
+.in +8
+The input file has links; it is left unchanged. See
+.IR ln "(1)"
+for more information. Use the
+.B \-f
+flag to force compression of multiply-linked files.
+.in -8
+.SH CAVEATS
+When writing compressed data to a tape, it is generally necessary to
+pad the output with zeroes up to a block boundary. When the data is
+read and the whole block is passed to
+.I gunzip
+for decompression,
+.I gunzip
+detects that there is extra trailing garbage after the compressed data
+and emits a warning by default. You have to use the --quiet option to
+suppress the warning. This option can be set in the
+.B GZIP
+environment variable as in:
+ for sh: GZIP="-q" tar -xfz --block-compress /dev/rst0
+ for csh: (setenv GZIP -q; tar -xfz --block-compr /dev/rst0
+
+In the above example, gzip is invoked implicitly by the -z option of
+GNU tar. Make sure that the same block size (-b option of tar) is used
+for reading and writing compressed data on tapes. (This example
+assumes you are using the GNU version of tar.)
+.SH BUGS
+The --list option reports incorrect sizes if they exceed 2 gigabytes.
+The --list option reports sizes as -1 and crc as ffffffff if the
+compressed file is on a non seekable media.
+
+In some rare cases, the --best option gives worse compression than
+the default compression level (-6). On some highly redundant files,
+.I compress
+compresses better than
+.I gzip.
projects / debian / gzip / commitdiff