DESCRIPTION
The
gzip program compresses and decompresses files using Lempel-Ziv coding (LZ77). If no
files are specified,
gzip will compress from standard input, or decompress to standard output. When in compression mode, each
file will be replaced with another file with the suffix, set by the
-S suffix option, added, if possible. In decompression mode, each
file will be checked for existence, as will the file with the suffix added.
If invoked as gunzip then the -d option is enabled. If invoked as zcat or gzcat then both the -c and -d options are enabled.
This version of gzip is also capable of decompressing files compressed using compress(1) or bzip2(1).
HISTORY
The
gzip program was originally written by Jean-loup Gailly, licensed under the GNU Public Licence. Matthew R. Green wrote a simple front end for
NetBSD 1.3 distribution media, based on the freely re-distributable zlib library. It was enhanced to be mostly feature-compatible with the original GNU
gzip program for
NetBSD 2.0.
This manual documents NetBSD gzip version 20040427.