bzip2 is a freely available, patent free, high-quality data compressor.
This utility typically compresses files to within 10% to 15% of the best available techniques, whilst being around twice as fast at compression and six times faster at decompression.
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 archive file format of bzip2 (.bz2) is incompatible with that of its predecessor, bzip (.bz).
bzip2 is built on top of libbzip2, a flexible library for handling compressed data in the bzip2 format.
Key Features
-
- Uses several layers of compression techniques:
- Run-length encoding.
- Burrows-Wheeler transform.
- Run-length encoding.
- Huffman coding.
- Multiple Huffman tables.
- Unary base 1 encoding.
- Delta encoding.
- Sparse bit array.
- Move to front.
- Supports (limited) recovery from media errors.
- Very portable.
- Uses several layers of compression techniques:
Website: sourceware.org/bzip2
Support: Documentation
Developer: Julian R Seward
License: BSD-style
bzip2 is written in C. Learn C with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Compression Tools | |
|---|---|
| LZ4 | Focused on compression and decompression speed |
| Zstandard | Fast compression algorithm, providing high compression ratios |
| brotli | Generic-purpose lossless compression algorithm |
| lzop | File compressor favoring speed over compression ratio |
| pigz | Parallel implementation of gzip |
| ouch | CLI tool for compressing and decompressing for various formats |
| pixz | Parallel, indexed xz compressor |
| gzip | Provides the standard GNU file compression utilities |
| BZip3 | Spiritual successor to BZip2 |
| bzip2 | Freely available, patent free, high-quality data compressor |
| PBZIP2 | Parallel implementation of bzip2 |
| lrzip | Achieve very high compression ratios and speed when used with large files |
| lbzip2 | Multi-threaded implementation of bzip2, suited for serial and parallel processing |
| ZXC | High-performance lossless compression library and command-line tool |
| plzip | Massively parallel lossless data compressor |
| p7zip-zstd | p7zip fork with additional codecs and improvements |
| 7-Zip | File archiver with a high compression ratio |
| ncompress | Fast, simple LZW file compressor |
| PXZ | Runs LZMA compression on multiple cores and processors |
| crabz | Like pigz but written in Rust |
| Lzip | Lossless data compressor aimed at Unix-like systems |
| cmix | Optimize compression ratio at the cost of high CPU/memory usage |
| lrzip-next | Long Range ZIP |
| rapidgzip | Parallelized decompression of gzip files |
| igzip | Command-line compression and decompression utility |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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