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1
2NAME
3       bzip2, bunzip2 - a block-sorting file compressor, v1.0.6
4       bzcat - decompresses files to stdout
5       bzip2recover - recovers data from damaged bzip2 files
6
7
8SYNOPSIS
9       bzip2 [ -cdfkqstvzVL123456789 ] [ filenames ...  ]
10       bunzip2 [ -fkvsVL ] [ filenames ...  ]
11       bzcat [ -s ] [ filenames ...  ]
12       bzip2recover filename
13
14
15DESCRIPTION
16       bzip2  compresses  files  using  the Burrows-Wheeler block
17       sorting text compression algorithm,  and  Huffman  coding.
18       Compression  is  generally  considerably  better than that
19       achieved by more conventional LZ77/LZ78-based compressors,
20       and  approaches  the performance of the PPM family of sta-
21       tistical compressors.
22
23       The command-line options are deliberately very similar  to
24       those of GNU gzip, but they are not identical.
25
26       bzip2  expects  a list of file names to accompany the com-
27       mand-line flags.  Each file is replaced  by  a  compressed
28       version  of  itself,  with  the  name "original_name.bz2".
29       Each compressed file has the same modification date,  per-
30       missions, and, when possible, ownership as the correspond-
31       ing original, so that these properties  can  be  correctly
32       restored  at  decompression  time.   File name handling is
33       naive in the sense that there is no mechanism for preserv-
34       ing  original file names, permissions, ownerships or dates
35       in filesystems which lack these concepts, or have  serious
36       file name length restrictions, such as MS-DOS.
37
38       bzip2  and  bunzip2 will by default not overwrite existing
39       files.  If you want this to happen, specify the -f flag.
40
41       If no file names  are  specified,  bzip2  compresses  from
42       standard  input  to  standard output.  In this case, bzip2
43       will decline to write compressed output to a terminal,  as
44       this  would  be  entirely  incomprehensible  and therefore
45       pointless.
46
47       bunzip2 (or bzip2 -d) decompresses  all  specified  files.
48       Files which were not created by bzip2 will be detected and
49       ignored, and a warning issued.  bzip2  attempts  to  guess
50       the  filename  for  the decompressed file from that of the
51       compressed file as follows:
52
53              filename.bz2    becomes   filename
54              filename.bz     becomes   filename
55              filename.tbz2   becomes   filename.tar
56              filename.tbz    becomes   filename.tar
57              anyothername    becomes   anyothername.out
58
59       If the file does not end in one of the recognised endings,
60       .bz2,  .bz,  .tbz2 or .tbz, bzip2 complains that it cannot
61       guess the name of the original file, and uses the original
62       name with .out appended.
63
64       As  with compression, supplying no filenames causes decom-
65       pression from standard input to standard output.
66
67       bunzip2 will correctly decompress a file which is the con-
68       catenation of two or more compressed files.  The result is
69       the concatenation of the corresponding uncompressed files.
70       Integrity testing (-t) of concatenated compressed files is
71       also supported.
72
73       You can also compress or decompress files to the  standard
74       output  by giving the -c flag.  Multiple files may be com-
75       pressed and decompressed like this.  The resulting outputs
76       are  fed  sequentially to stdout.  Compression of multiple
77       files in this manner generates a stream containing  multi-
78       ple compressed file representations.  Such a stream can be
79       decompressed correctly only  by  bzip2  version  0.9.0  or
80       later.   Earlier  versions of bzip2 will stop after decom-
81       pressing the first file in the stream.
82
83       bzcat (or bzip2 -dc) decompresses all specified  files  to
84       the standard output.
85
86       bzip2  will  read arguments from the environment variables
87       BZIP2 and BZIP, in  that  order,  and  will  process  them
88       before  any  arguments  read  from the command line.  This
89       gives a convenient way to supply default arguments.
90
91       Compression is always performed, even  if  the  compressed
92       file  is slightly larger than the original.  Files of less
93       than about one hundred bytes tend to get larger, since the
94       compression  mechanism  has  a  constant  overhead  in the
95       region of 50 bytes.  Random data (including the output  of
96       most  file  compressors)  is  coded at about 8.05 bits per
97       byte, giving an expansion of around 0.5%.
98
99       As a self-check for your  protection,  bzip2  uses  32-bit
100       CRCs  to make sure that the decompressed version of a file
101       is identical to the original.  This guards against corrup-
102       tion  of  the compressed data, and against undetected bugs
103       in bzip2 (hopefully very unlikely).  The chances  of  data
104       corruption  going  undetected  is  microscopic,  about one
105       chance in four billion for each file processed.  Be aware,
106       though,  that  the  check occurs upon decompression, so it
107       can only tell you that something is wrong.  It can't  help
108       you  recover  the original uncompressed data.  You can use
109       bzip2recover to try to recover data from damaged files.
110
111       Return values: 0 for a normal exit,  1  for  environmental
112       problems  (file not found, invalid flags, I/O errors, &c),
113       2 to indicate a corrupt compressed file, 3 for an internal
114       consistency error (eg, bug) which caused bzip2 to panic.
115
116
117OPTIONS
118       -c --stdout
119              Compress or decompress to standard output.
120
121       -d --decompress
122              Force  decompression.  bzip2, bunzip2 and bzcat are
123              really the same program,  and  the  decision  about
124              what  actions to take is done on the basis of which
125              name is used.  This flag overrides that  mechanism,
126              and forces bzip2 to decompress.
127
128       -z --compress
129              The   complement   to   -d:   forces   compression,
130              regardless of the invocation name.
131
132       -t --test
133              Check integrity of the specified file(s), but don't
134              decompress  them.   This  really  performs  a trial
135              decompression and throws away the result.
136
137       -f --force
138              Force overwrite of output files.   Normally,  bzip2
139              will  not  overwrite  existing  output files.  Also
140              forces bzip2 to break hard links to files, which it
141              otherwise wouldn't do.
142
143              bzip2  normally  declines to decompress files which
144              don't have the  correct  magic  header  bytes.   If
145              forced  (-f),  however,  it  will  pass  such files
146              through unmodified.  This is how GNU gzip  behaves.
147
148       -k --keep
149              Keep  (don't delete) input files during compression
150              or decompression.
151
152       -s --small
153              Reduce memory usage, for compression, decompression
154              and  testing.   Files  are  decompressed and tested
155              using a modified algorithm which only requires  2.5
156              bytes  per  block byte.  This means any file can be
157              decompressed in 2300k of memory,  albeit  at  about
158              half the normal speed.
159
160              During  compression,  -s  selects  a  block size of
161              200k, which limits memory use to  around  the  same
162              figure,  at  the expense of your compression ratio.
163              In short, if your  machine  is  low  on  memory  (8
164              megabytes  or  less),  use  -s for everything.  See
165              MEMORY MANAGEMENT below.
166
167       -q --quiet
168              Suppress non-essential warning messages.   Messages
169              pertaining  to I/O errors and other critical events
170              will not be suppressed.
171
172       -v --verbose
173              Verbose mode -- show the compression ratio for each
174              file  processed.   Further  -v's  increase the ver-
175              bosity level, spewing out lots of information which
176              is primarily of interest for diagnostic purposes.
177
178       -L --license -V --version
179              Display  the  software  version,  license terms and
180              conditions.
181
182       -1 (or --fast) to -9 (or --best)
183              Set the block size to 100 k, 200 k ..  900  k  when
184              compressing.   Has  no  effect  when decompressing.
185              See MEMORY MANAGEMENT below.  The --fast and --best
186              aliases  are  primarily for GNU gzip compatibility.
187              In particular, --fast doesn't make things  signifi-
188              cantly  faster.   And  --best  merely  selects  the
189              default behaviour.
190
191       --     Treats all subsequent arguments as file names, even
192              if they start with a dash.  This is so you can han-
193              dle files with names beginning  with  a  dash,  for
194              example: bzip2 -- -myfilename.
195
196       --repetitive-fast --repetitive-best
197              These  flags  are  redundant  in versions 0.9.5 and
198              above.  They provided some coarse control over  the
199              behaviour  of the sorting algorithm in earlier ver-
200              sions, which was sometimes useful.  0.9.5 and above
201              have  an  improved  algorithm  which  renders these
202              flags irrelevant.
203
204
205MEMORY MANAGEMENT
206       bzip2 compresses large files in blocks.   The  block  size
207       affects  both  the  compression  ratio  achieved,  and the
208       amount of memory needed for compression and decompression.
209       The  flags  -1  through  -9  specify  the block size to be
210       100,000 bytes through 900,000 bytes (the default)  respec-
211       tively.   At  decompression  time, the block size used for
212       compression is read from  the  header  of  the  compressed
213       file, and bunzip2 then allocates itself just enough memory
214       to decompress the file.  Since block sizes are  stored  in
215       compressed  files,  it follows that the flags -1 to -9 are
216       irrelevant to and so ignored during decompression.
217
218       Compression and decompression requirements, in bytes,  can
219       be estimated as:
220
221              Compression:   400k + ( 8 x block size )
222
223              Decompression: 100k + ( 4 x block size ), or
224                             100k + ( 2.5 x block size )
225
226       Larger  block  sizes  give  rapidly  diminishing  marginal
227       returns.  Most of the compression comes from the first two
228       or  three hundred k of block size, a fact worth bearing in
229       mind when using bzip2  on  small  machines.   It  is  also
230       important  to  appreciate  that  the  decompression memory
231       requirement is set at compression time by  the  choice  of
232       block size.
233
234       For  files  compressed  with  the default 900k block size,
235       bunzip2 will require about 3700 kbytes to decompress.   To
236       support decompression of any file on a 4 megabyte machine,
237       bunzip2 has an option to  decompress  using  approximately
238       half this amount of memory, about 2300 kbytes.  Decompres-
239       sion speed is also halved, so you should use  this  option
240       only where necessary.  The relevant flag is -s.
241
242       In general, try and use the largest block size memory con-
243       straints  allow,  since  that  maximises  the  compression
244       achieved.   Compression and decompression speed are virtu-
245       ally unaffected by block size.
246
247       Another significant point applies to files which fit in  a
248       single  block  --  that  means  most files you'd encounter
249       using a large block  size.   The  amount  of  real  memory
250       touched is proportional to the size of the file, since the
251       file is smaller than a block.  For example, compressing  a
252       file  20,000  bytes  long  with the flag -9 will cause the
253       compressor to allocate around 7600k of  memory,  but  only
254       touch 400k + 20000 * 8 = 560 kbytes of it.  Similarly, the
255       decompressor will allocate 3700k but  only  touch  100k  +
256       20000 * 4 = 180 kbytes.
257
258       Here  is a table which summarises the maximum memory usage
259       for different block sizes.  Also  recorded  is  the  total
260       compressed  size for 14 files of the Calgary Text Compres-
261       sion Corpus totalling 3,141,622 bytes.  This column  gives
262       some  feel  for  how  compression  varies with block size.
263       These figures tend to understate the advantage  of  larger
264       block  sizes  for  larger files, since the Corpus is domi-
265       nated by smaller files.
266
267                  Compress   Decompress   Decompress   Corpus
268           Flag     usage      usage       -s usage     Size
269
270            -1      1200k       500k         350k      914704
271            -2      2000k       900k         600k      877703
272            -3      2800k      1300k         850k      860338
273            -4      3600k      1700k        1100k      846899
274            -5      4400k      2100k        1350k      845160
275            -6      5200k      2500k        1600k      838626
276            -7      6100k      2900k        1850k      834096
277            -8      6800k      3300k        2100k      828642
278            -9      7600k      3700k        2350k      828642
279
280
281RECOVERING DATA FROM DAMAGED FILES
282       bzip2 compresses files in blocks, usually 900kbytes  long.
283       Each block is handled independently.  If a media or trans-
284       mission error causes a multi-block  .bz2  file  to  become
285       damaged,  it  may  be  possible  to  recover data from the
286       undamaged blocks in the file.
287
288       The compressed representation of each block  is  delimited
289       by  a  48-bit pattern, which makes it possible to find the
290       block boundaries with reasonable  certainty.   Each  block
291       also  carries its own 32-bit CRC, so damaged blocks can be
292       distinguished from undamaged ones.
293
294       bzip2recover is a  simple  program  whose  purpose  is  to
295       search  for blocks in .bz2 files, and write each block out
296       into its own .bz2 file.  You can then use bzip2 -t to test
297       the integrity of the resulting files, and decompress those
298       which are undamaged.
299
300       bzip2recover takes a single argument, the name of the dam-
301       aged    file,    and    writes    a    number   of   files
302       "rec00001file.bz2",  "rec00002file.bz2",  etc,  containing
303       the   extracted   blocks.   The   output   filenames   are
304       designed  so  that the use of wildcards in subsequent pro-
305       cessing  -- for example, "bzip2 -dc  rec*file.bz2 > recov-
306       ered_data" -- processes the files in the correct order.
307
308       bzip2recover should be of most use dealing with large .bz2
309       files,  as  these will contain many blocks.  It is clearly
310       futile to use it on damaged single-block  files,  since  a
311       damaged  block  cannot  be recovered.  If you wish to min-
312       imise any potential data loss through media  or  transmis-
313       sion errors, you might consider compressing with a smaller
314       block size.
315
316
317PERFORMANCE NOTES
318       The sorting phase of compression gathers together  similar
319       strings  in  the  file.  Because of this, files containing
320       very long runs of  repeated  symbols,  like  "aabaabaabaab
321       ..."   (repeated  several hundred times) may compress more
322       slowly than normal.  Versions 0.9.5 and  above  fare  much
323       better  than previous versions in this respect.  The ratio
324       between worst-case and average-case compression time is in
325       the  region  of  10:1.  For previous versions, this figure
326       was more like 100:1.  You can use the -vvvv option to mon-
327       itor progress in great detail, if you want.
328
329       Decompression speed is unaffected by these phenomena.
330
331       bzip2  usually  allocates  several  megabytes of memory to
332       operate in, and then charges all over it in a fairly  ran-
333       dom  fashion.   This means that performance, both for com-
334       pressing and decompressing, is largely determined  by  the
335       speed  at  which  your  machine  can service cache misses.
336       Because of this, small changes to the code to  reduce  the
337       miss  rate  have  been observed to give disproportionately
338       large performance improvements.  I imagine bzip2 will per-
339       form best on machines with very large caches.
340
341
342CAVEATS
343       I/O  error  messages  are not as helpful as they could be.
344       bzip2 tries hard to detect I/O errors  and  exit  cleanly,
345       but  the  details  of  what  the problem is sometimes seem
346       rather misleading.
347
348       This manual page pertains to version 1.0.6 of bzip2.  Com-
349       pressed  data created by this version is entirely forwards
350       and  backwards  compatible  with   the   previous   public
351       releases,  versions  0.1pl2,  0.9.0,  0.9.5, 1.0.0, 1.0.1,
352       1.0.2 and above, but with the  following  exception: 0.9.0
353       and above can  correctly decompress  multiple concatenated
354       compressed files.  0.1pl2  cannot do this;  it  will  stop
355       after  decompressing just the first file in the stream.
356
357       bzip2recover  versions prior to 1.0.2 used 32-bit integers
358       to represent bit positions in compressed  files,  so  they
359       could  not handle compressed files more than 512 megabytes
360       long.  Versions 1.0.2 and above use 64-bit  ints  on  some
361       platforms  which  support them (GNU supported targets, and
362       Windows).  To establish whether or  not  bzip2recover  was
363       built  with  such  a limitation, run it without arguments.
364       In any event you can build yourself an  unlimited  version
365       if  you  can  recompile  it  with MaybeUInt64 set to be an
366       unsigned 64-bit integer.
367
368
369AUTHOR
370       Julian Seward, jsewardbzip.org.
371
372       http://www.bzip.org
373
374       The ideas embodied in bzip2 are due to (at least) the fol-
375       lowing  people: Michael Burrows and David Wheeler (for the
376       block sorting transformation), David Wheeler  (again,  for
377       the Huffman coder), Peter Fenwick (for the structured cod-
378       ing model in the original bzip, and many refinements), and
379       Alistair  Moffat,  Radford  Neal  and  Ian Witten (for the
380       arithmetic  coder  in  the  original  bzip).   I  am  much
381       indebted for their help, support and advice.  See the man-
382       ual in the source distribution for pointers to sources  of
383       documentation.  Christian von Roques encouraged me to look
384       for faster sorting algorithms, so as to speed up  compres-
385       sion.  Bela Lubkin encouraged me to improve the worst-case
386       compression performance.  Donna Robinson XMLised the docu-
387       mentation.   The bz* scripts are derived from those of GNU
388       gzip.  Many people sent patches, helped  with  portability
389       problems,  lent  machines,  gave advice and were generally
390       helpful.
391
392