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The bzip2 command

The bzip2 command lets you compress and decompress the files i.e. it helps in binding the files into a single file which takes less storage space as the original file use to take.

Syntax:

bzip2 [OPTIONS] filenames ...

Note : Each file is replaced by a compressed version of itself, with the name original name of the file followed by extension bz2.

Options and their Functionalities:

Option Alias Description
-d --decompress to decompress compressed file
-f --force to force overwrite an existing output file
-h --help to display the help message and exit
-k --keep to enable file compression, doesn't deletes the original input file
-L --license to display the license terms and conditions
-q --quiet to suppress non-essential warning messages
-t --test to check integrity of the specified .bz2 file, but don't want to decompress them
-v --erbose to display details for each compression operation
-V --version to display the software version
-z --compress to enable file compression, but deletes the original input file

By default, when bzip2 compresses a file, it deletes the original (or input) file. However, if you don't want that to happen, use the -k command line option.

Examples:

  1. To force compression: bzip2 -z input.txt Note: This option deletes the original file also

  2. To force compression and also retain original input file: bzip2 -k input.txt

  3. To force decompression: bzip2 -d input.txt.bz2

  4. To test integrity of compressed file: bzip2 -t input.txt.bz2

  5. To show the compression ratio for each file processed: bzip2 -v input.txt

Last update: 2022-05-12
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