gzip.doc

gzip1.2.4源码

GZIP(1)                  USER COMMANDS                    GZIP(1)

NAME
     gzip, gunzip, zcat - compress or expand files

SYNOPSIS
     gzip [ -acdfhlLnNrtvV19 ] [-S suffix] [ name ... ]
     gunzip [ -acfhlLnNrtvV ] [-S suffix] [ name ... ]
     zcat [ -fhLV ] [ name ... ]

DESCRIPTION
     Gzip reduces the size of the named  files  using  Lempel-Ziv
     coding  (LZ77).  Whenever possible, each file is replaced by
     one with the extension .gz, while keeping the same ownership
     modes,  access  and modification times.  (The default exten-
     sion is -gz for VMS, 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  out-
     put.   Gzip will only attempt to compress regular files.  In
     particular, it will ignore symbolic links.

     If the compressed file name is too long for its file system,
     gzip truncates it.  Gzip attempts to truncate only the parts
     of the file name longer than 3 characters.  (A part is  del-
     imited  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.

     By default, gzip keeps the original file name and  timestamp
     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.

     Compressed files can be  restored  to  their  original  form
     using  gzip -d or gunzip or 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.

     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.  gunzip
     also recognizes the special  extensions  .tgz  and  .taz  as
     shorthands   for  .tar.gz  and  .tar.Z  respectively.   When
     compressing, gzip  uses  the  .tgz  extension  if  necessary
     instead of truncating a file with a .tar extension.

     gunzip can currently decompress files created by gzip,  zip,
     compress,  compress  -H  or pack. The detection of the input
     format is automatic.  When  using  the  first  two  formats,
     gunzip  checks  a  32  bit  CRC. For pack, gunzip checks the
     uncompressed length. The standard compress  format  was  not
     designed  to  allow  consistency  checks.  However 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 uncompress  does  not
     complain.  This generally means that the standard uncompress
     does not check its input, and happily generates garbage out-
     put.   The  SCO  compress -H format (lzh compression method)
     does not include a CRC  but  also  allows  some  consistency
     checks.

     Files created by 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 unzip instead of gunzip.

     zcat is identical to gunzip -c. (On some systems,  zcat  may
     be  installed  as  gzcat  to  preserve  the original link to
     compress.) zcat uncompresses either a list of files  on  the
     command   line   or   its  standard  input  and  writes  the
     uncompressed data on standard output.  zcat will  uncompress
     files that have the correct magic number whether they have a
     .gz suffix or not.

     Gzip uses the Lempel-Ziv algorithm used in  zip  and  PKZIP.
     The  amount  of  compression obtained depends on the size of
     the input and the distribution of common substrings.   Typi-
     cally,  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 compress), Huffman coding (as
     used in pack), or adaptive Huffman coding (compact).

     Compression is always performed, even if the compressed file
     is  slightly larger than the original. The worst case expan-
     sion 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.  gzip preserves the mode, ownership
     and timestamps of files when compressing or decompressing.

OPTIONS
     -a --ascii
          Ascii text mode: convert end-of-lines using local  con-
          ventions.  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.

     -c --stdout --to-stdout
          Write output on standard output;  keep  original  files
          unchanged.   If there are several input files, the out-
          put consists of a sequence of independently  compressed
          members.  To obtain better compression, concatenate all
          input files before compressing them.

     -d --decompress --uncompress
          Decompress.

     -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 writ-
          ten to a terminal. If the input data is not in a format
          recognized by gzip, and if the option --stdout is  also
          given,  copy the input data without change to the stan-
          dard ouput: let zcat behave as cat. If -f is not given,
          and when not running in the background, gzip prompts to
          verify whether an existing file should be overwritten.

     -h --help
          Display a help screen and quit.

     -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.

     -L --license
          Display the gzip license and quit.

     -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  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.

     -N --name