"gzip/gunzip" - Compressed *.gz Files

Ubuntu Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟"gzip/gunzip" - Compressed *.gz Files

This section provides a tutorial example on how to use 'gzip' and 'gunzip' commands to compress large files and restore them later. Compressed files will have the *.gz file name extension.

If you have a large file, you may want to compress it with the "gzip" utility to save storage space.

1. Compress a file with the "compress" command, which uses the Lempel-Ziv algorithm. The original file is replaced with the compressed version and renamed to the same name plus the extension .gz.

herong$ cp history-of-Linux.txt history-of-Linux-bck.txt

herong$ gzip history-of-Linux.txt

herong$ ls -l history*
-rw-r--r--  1 herong  staff  1444  history-of-Linux-bck.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 herong  staff   834  history-of-Linux.txt.gz

2. Restore a compressed file with the "gunzip" command. The compressed file is replaced with the restored version and renamed to the original name without the extension .gz.

herong$ gunzip history-of-Linux.txt.gz

herong$ ls -l history*
-rw-r--r--  1 herong  staff  1444  history-of-Linux-bck.txt
-rw-r--r--  1 herong  staff  1444  history-of-Linux.txt