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+.PU
+.TH bzip2 1
+.SH NAME
+bzip2, bunzip2 \- a block-sorting file compressor, v1.0
+.br
+bzcat \- decompresses files to stdout
+.br
+bzip2recover \- recovers data from damaged bzip2 files
+
+.SH SYNOPSIS
+.ll +8
+.B bzip2
+.RB [ " \-cdfkqstvzVL123456789 " ]
+[
+.I "filenames \&..."
+]
+.ll -8
+.br
+.B bunzip2
+.RB [ " \-fkvsVL " ]
+[
+.I "filenames \&..."
+]
+.br
+.B bzcat
+.RB [ " \-s " ]
+[
+.I "filenames \&..."
+]
+.br
+.B bzip2recover
+.I "filename"
+
+.SH DESCRIPTION
+.I bzip2
+compresses files using the Burrows-Wheeler block sorting
+text compression algorithm, and Huffman coding. Compression is
+generally considerably better than that achieved by more conventional
+LZ77/LZ78-based compressors, and approaches the performance of the PPM
+family of statistical compressors.
+
+The command-line options are deliberately very similar to
+those of
+.I GNU gzip,
+but they are not identical.
+
+.I bzip2
+expects a list of file names to accompany the
+command-line flags. Each file is replaced by a compressed version of
+itself, with the name "original_name.bz2".
+Each compressed file
+has the same modification date, permissions, and, when possible,
+ownership as the corresponding original, so that these properties can
+be correctly restored at decompression time. File name handling is
+naive in the sense that there is no mechanism for preserving original
+file names, permissions, ownerships or dates in filesystems which lack
+these concepts, or have serious file name length restrictions, such as
+MS-DOS.
+
+.I bzip2
+and
+.I bunzip2
+will by default not overwrite existing
+files. If you want this to happen, specify the \-f flag.
+
+If no file names are specified,
+.I bzip2
+compresses from standard
+input to standard output. In this case,
+.I bzip2
+will decline to
+write compressed output to a terminal, as this would be entirely
+incomprehensible and therefore pointless.
+
+.I bunzip2
+(or
+.I bzip2 \-d)
+decompresses all
+specified files. Files which were not created by
+.I bzip2
+will be detected and ignored, and a warning issued.
+.I bzip2
+attempts to guess the filename for the decompressed file
+from that of the compressed file as follows:
+
+ filename.bz2 becomes filename
+ filename.bz becomes filename
+ filename.tbz2 becomes filename.tar
+ filename.tbz becomes filename.tar
+ anyothername becomes anyothername.out
+
+If the file does not end in one of the recognised endings,
+.I .bz2,
+.I .bz,
+.I .tbz2
+or
+.I .tbz,
+.I bzip2
+complains that it cannot
+guess the name of the original file, and uses the original name
+with
+.I .out
+appended.
+
+As with compression, supplying no
+filenames causes decompression from
+standard input to standard output.
+
+.I bunzip2
+will correctly decompress a file which is the
+concatenation of two or more compressed files. The result is the
+concatenation of the corresponding uncompressed files. Integrity
+testing (\-t)
+of concatenated
+compressed files is also supported.
+
+You can also compress or decompress files to the standard output by
+giving the \-c flag. Multiple files may be compressed and
+decompressed like this. The resulting outputs are fed sequentially to
+stdout. Compression of multiple files
+in this manner generates a stream
+containing multiple compressed file representations. Such a stream
+can be decompressed correctly only by
+.I bzip2
+version 0.9.0 or
+later. Earlier versions of
+.I bzip2
+will stop after decompressing
+the first file in the stream.
+
+.I bzcat
+(or
+.I bzip2 -dc)
+decompresses all specified files to
+the standard output.
+
+.I bzip2
+will read arguments from the environment variables
+.I BZIP2
+and
+.I BZIP,
+in that order, and will process them
+before any arguments read from the command line. This gives a
+convenient way to supply default arguments.
+
+Compression is always performed, even if the compressed
+file is slightly
+larger than the original. Files of less than about one hundred bytes
+tend to get larger, since the compression mechanism has a constant
+overhead in the region of 50 bytes. Random data (including the output
+of most file compressors) is coded at about 8.05 bits per byte, giving
+an expansion of around 0.5%.
+
+As a self-check for your protection,
+.I
+bzip2
+uses 32-bit CRCs to
+make sure that the decompressed version of a file is identical to the
+original. This guards against corruption of the compressed data, and
+against undetected bugs in
+.I bzip2
+(hopefully very unlikely). The
+chances of data corruption going undetected is microscopic, about one
+chance in four billion for each file processed. Be aware, though, that
+the check occurs upon decompression, so it can only tell you that
+something is wrong. It can't help you
+recover the original uncompressed
+data. You can use
+.I bzip2recover
+to try to recover data from
+damaged files.
+
+Return values: 0 for a normal exit, 1 for environmental problems (file
+not found, invalid flags, I/O errors, &c), 2 to indicate a corrupt
+compressed file, 3 for an internal consistency error (eg, bug) which
+caused
+.I bzip2
+to panic.
+
+.SH OPTIONS
+.TP
+.B \-c --stdout
+Compress or decompress to standard output.
+.TP
+.B \-d --decompress
+Force decompression.
+.I bzip2,
+.I bunzip2
+and
+.I bzcat
+are
+really the same program, and the decision about what actions to take is
+done on the basis of which name is used. This flag overrides that
+mechanism, and forces
+.I bzip2
+to decompress.
+.TP
+.B \-z --compress
+The complement to \-d: forces compression, regardless of the
+invokation name.
+.TP
+.B \-t --test
+Check integrity of the specified file(s), but don't decompress them.
+This really performs a trial decompression and throws away the result.
+.TP
+.B \-f --force
+Force overwrite of output files. Normally,
+.I bzip2
+will not overwrite
+existing output files. Also forces
+.I bzip2
+to break hard links
+to files, which it otherwise wouldn't do.
+.TP
+.B \-k --keep
+Keep (don't delete) input files during compression
+or decompression.
+.TP
+.B \-s --small
+Reduce memory usage, for compression, decompression and testing. Files
+are decompressed and tested using a modified algorithm which only
+requires 2.5 bytes per block byte. This means any file can be
+decompressed in 2300k of memory, albeit at about half the normal speed.
+
+During compression, \-s selects a block size of 200k, which limits
+memory use to around the same figure, at the expense of your compression
+ratio. In short, if your machine is low on memory (8 megabytes or
+less), use \-s for everything. See MEMORY MANAGEMENT below.
+.TP
+.B \-q --quiet
+Suppress non-essential warning messages. Messages pertaining to
+I/O errors and other critical events will not be suppressed.
+.TP
+.B \-v --verbose
+Verbose mode -- show the compression ratio for each file processed.
+Further \-v's increase the verbosity level, spewing out lots of
+information which is primarily of interest for diagnostic purposes.
+.TP
+.B \-L --license -V --version
+Display the software version, license terms and conditions.
+.TP
+.B \-1 to \-9
+Set the block size to 100 k, 200 k .. 900 k when compressing. Has no
+effect when decompressing. See MEMORY MANAGEMENT below.
+.TP
+.B \--
+Treats all subsequent arguments as file names, even if they start
+with a dash. This is so you can handle files with names beginning
+with a dash, for example: bzip2 \-- \-myfilename.
+.TP
+.B \--repetitive-fast --repetitive-best
+These flags are redundant in versions 0.9.5 and above. They provided
+some coarse control over the behaviour of the sorting algorithm in
+earlier versions, which was sometimes useful. 0.9.5 and above have an
+improved algorithm which renders these flags irrelevant.
+
+.SH MEMORY MANAGEMENT
+.I bzip2
+compresses large files in blocks. The block size affects
+both the compression ratio achieved, and the amount of memory needed for
+compression and decompression. The flags \-1 through \-9
+specify the block size to be 100,000 bytes through 900,000 bytes (the
+default) respectively. At decompression time, the block size used for
+compression is read from the header of the compressed file, and
+.I bunzip2
+then allocates itself just enough memory to decompress
+the file. Since block sizes are stored in compressed files, it follows
+that the flags \-1 to \-9 are irrelevant to and so ignored
+during decompression.
+
+Compression and decompression requirements,
+in bytes, can be estimated as:
+
+ Compression: 400k + ( 8 x block size )
+
+ Decompression: 100k + ( 4 x block size ), or
+ 100k + ( 2.5 x block size )
+
+Larger block sizes give rapidly diminishing marginal returns. Most of
+the compression comes from the first two or three hundred k of block
+size, a fact worth bearing in mind when using
+.I bzip2
+on small machines.
+It is also important to appreciate that the decompression memory
+requirement is set at compression time by the choice of block size.
+
+For files compressed with the default 900k block size,
+.I bunzip2
+will require about 3700 kbytes to decompress. To support decompression
+of any file on a 4 megabyte machine,
+.I bunzip2
+has an option to
+decompress using approximately half this amount of memory, about 2300
+kbytes. Decompression speed is also halved, so you should use this
+option only where necessary. The relevant flag is -s.
+
+In general, try and use the largest block size memory constraints allow,
+since that maximises the compression achieved. Compression and
+decompression speed are virtually unaffected by block size.
+
+Another significant point applies to files which fit in a single block
+-- that means most files you'd encounter using a large block size. The
+amount of real memory touched is proportional to the size of the file,
+since the file is smaller than a block. For example, compressing a file
+20,000 bytes long with the flag -9 will cause the compressor to
+allocate around 7600k of memory, but only touch 400k + 20000 * 8 = 560
+kbytes of it. Similarly, the decompressor will allocate 3700k but only
+touch 100k + 20000 * 4 = 180 kbytes.
+
+Here is a table which summarises the maximum memory usage for different
+block sizes. Also recorded is the total compressed size for 14 files of
+the Calgary Text Compression Corpus totalling 3,141,622 bytes. This
+column gives some feel for how compression varies with block size.
+These figures tend to understate the advantage of larger block sizes for
+larger files, since the Corpus is dominated by smaller files.
+
+ Compress Decompress Decompress Corpus
+ Flag usage usage -s usage Size
+
+ -1 1200k 500k 350k 914704
+ -2 2000k 900k 600k 877703
+ -3 2800k 1300k 850k 860338
+ -4 3600k 1700k 1100k 846899
+ -5 4400k 2100k 1350k 845160
+ -6 5200k 2500k 1600k 838626
+ -7 6100k 2900k 1850k 834096
+ -8 6800k 3300k 2100k 828642
+ -9 7600k 3700k 2350k 828642
+
+.SH RECOVERING DATA FROM DAMAGED FILES
+.I bzip2
+compresses files in blocks, usually 900kbytes long. Each
+block is handled independently. If a media or transmission error causes
+a multi-block .bz2
+file to become damaged, it may be possible to
+recover data from the undamaged blocks in the file.
+
+The compressed representation of each block is delimited by a 48-bit
+pattern, which makes it possible to find the block boundaries with
+reasonable certainty. Each block also carries its own 32-bit CRC, so
+damaged blocks can be distinguished from undamaged ones.
+
+.I bzip2recover
+is a simple program whose purpose is to search for
+blocks in .bz2 files, and write each block out into its own .bz2
+file. You can then use
+.I bzip2
+\-t
+to test the
+integrity of the resulting files, and decompress those which are
+undamaged.
+
+.I bzip2recover
+takes a single argument, the name of the damaged file,
+and writes a number of files "rec0001file.bz2",
+"rec0002file.bz2", etc, containing the extracted blocks.
+The output filenames are designed so that the use of
+wildcards in subsequent processing -- for example,
+"bzip2 -dc rec*file.bz2 > recovered_data" -- lists the files in
+the correct order.
+
+.I bzip2recover
+should be of most use dealing with large .bz2
+files, as these will contain many blocks. It is clearly
+futile to use it on damaged single-block files, since a
+damaged block cannot be recovered. If you wish to minimise
+any potential data loss through media or transmission errors,
+you might consider compressing with a smaller
+block size.
+
+.SH PERFORMANCE NOTES
+The sorting phase of compression gathers together similar strings in the
+file. Because of this, files containing very long runs of repeated
+symbols, like "aabaabaabaab ..." (repeated several hundred times) may
+compress more slowly than normal. Versions 0.9.5 and above fare much
+better than previous versions in this respect. The ratio between
+worst-case and average-case compression time is in the region of 10:1.
+For previous versions, this figure was more like 100:1. You can use the
+\-vvvv option to monitor progress in great detail, if you want.
+
+Decompression speed is unaffected by these phenomena.
+
+.I bzip2
+usually allocates several megabytes of memory to operate
+in, and then charges all over it in a fairly random fashion. This means
+that performance, both for compressing and decompressing, is largely
+determined by the speed at which your machine can service cache misses.
+Because of this, small changes to the code to reduce the miss rate have
+been observed to give disproportionately large performance improvements.
+I imagine
+.I bzip2
+will perform best on machines with very large caches.
+
+.SH CAVEATS
+I/O error messages are not as helpful as they could be.
+.I bzip2
+tries hard to detect I/O errors and exit cleanly, but the details of
+what the problem is sometimes seem rather misleading.
+
+This manual page pertains to version 1.0 of
+.I bzip2.
+Compressed
+data created by this version is entirely forwards and backwards
+compatible with the previous public releases, versions 0.1pl2, 0.9.0
+and 0.9.5,
+but with the following exception: 0.9.0 and above can correctly
+decompress multiple concatenated compressed files. 0.1pl2 cannot do
+this; it will stop after decompressing just the first file in the
+stream.
+
+.I bzip2recover
+uses 32-bit integers to represent bit positions in
+compressed files, so it cannot handle compressed files more than 512
+megabytes long. This could easily be fixed.
+
+.SH AUTHOR
+Julian Seward, jseward@acm.org.
+
+http://sourceware.cygnus.com/bzip2
+http://www.muraroa.demon.co.uk
+
+The ideas embodied in
+.I bzip2
+are due to (at least) the following
+people: Michael Burrows and David Wheeler (for the block sorting
+transformation), David Wheeler (again, for the Huffman coder), Peter
+Fenwick (for the structured coding model in the original
+.I bzip,
+and many refinements), and Alistair Moffat, Radford Neal and Ian Witten
+(for the arithmetic coder in the original
+.I bzip).
+I am much
+indebted for their help, support and advice. See the manual in the
+source distribution for pointers to sources of documentation. Christian
+von Roques encouraged me to look for faster sorting algorithms, so as to
+speed up compression. Bela Lubkin encouraged me to improve the
+worst-case compression performance. Many people sent patches, helped
+with portability problems, lent machines, gave advice and were generally
+helpful.