compress -- Command

Compress a file
compress [ -dfvc ] [ -bnum ] [ file ... ]

compress compresses a file using the Lempel-Ziv algorithm.  With text files
and archives, it often can achieve 50% rate of compression.

If one or more files are specified on the command, compress compresses them
and appends the suffix .Z onto  the end of each compressed file's name.  If
no file is specified on the command line, compress compresses text from the
standard input and writes the compressed text to the standard output.

compress recognizes the following options:

-b   The ``bits'' option.  compress  uses the compression level set via the
     num argument.   Previous releases of compress  would only allow values
     of num up to 12, with  12 being the default value if the -b option was
     not  specified.   The version  of  compress  introduced with  COHERENT
     version 3.1 handles values up to 16, with 12 being the default.

-c   Send output to stdout.

-d   Decompress rather than compress.

-f   Force an  output file  to be  generated even if  no space is  saved by
     compression.

-v   Verbose   mode:  force   compress  to   write  statistics   about  its
     performance.

If you  wish to  ensure backwards  compatibility with previous  releases of
COHERENT, do not use compress with a num value greater than 12.

See Also

commands,
compression,
gzip,
ram,
uncompress,
zcat

© 2012 by Stephen A. Ness