BZip3 is a lossless data compressor developed as a spiritual successor to bzip2. It combines block sorting with modern entropy coding and additional data transforms to improve compression efficiency, particularly with text and source code.
The compressor aims to achieve stronger compression ratios while maintaining practical processing performance. Unlike bzip2, it produces its own .bz3 format, which requires a compatible decoder.
BZip3 provides a command-line utility and a compression library. Its block-based design allows users to configure memory requirements and distribute processing across multiple threads. The program is suitable for workloads where compression density is important but the resource demands of experimental compressors would be excessive.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Lossless compression using block-sorting techniques and context-mixing entropy coding.
- Combines the Burrows-Wheeler transform with additional redundancy-reduction techniques.
- Produces compressed files using the .bz3 format.
- Supports configurable compression block sizes.
- Offers multithreaded compression through independently processed blocks.
- Allows the number of parallel processing jobs to be specified.
- Provides a batch mode for handling multiple files.
- Supports compression and decompression through standard output.
- Includes a test mode for checking compressed data integrity.
- Uses CRC32 checksums to detect compressed data corruption.
- Supports retaining or removing original input files after processing.
- Provides verbose output containing compression statistics.
- Offers a reusable library for software developers.
- Includes companion utilities for examining and processing compressed content.
Website: github.com/iczelia/bzip3
Support:
Developer: Kamila Szewczyk
License: GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0
BZip3 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 |
| bsc | High-performance block-sorting compressor for large files |
| rapidgzip | Parallelized decompression of gzip files |
| Kanzi | Modular lossless compressor with multithreaded processing |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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