"compress/uncompress" - Compressed *.Z Files

Linux Tutorials - Herong's Tutorial Examples

∟"compress/uncompress" - Compressed *.Z Files

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

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

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

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

herong$ compress 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   963  history-of-linux.txt.Z

2. Restore a compressed file with the "uncompress" command. The compressed file is replaced with the restored version and renamed to the same name without the extension .Z.

herong$ uncompress history-of-linux.txt.Z

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