Plzip is a massively parallel (multi-threaded) lossless data compressor based on the lzlib compression library, with a user interface similar to the one of lzip, bzip2 or gzip.
Plzip can compress/decompress large files on multiprocessor machines much faster than lzip, at the cost of a slightly reduced compression ratio (0.4 to 2 percent larger compressed files). Note that the number of usable threads is limited by file size; on files larger than a few GB plzip can use hundreds of processors, but on files of only a few MB plzip is no faster than lzip.
When compressing, plzip divides the input file into chunks and compresses as many chunks simultaneously as worker threads are chosen, creating a multimember compressed file.
When decompressing, plzip decompresses as many members simultaneously as worker threads are chosen.
Key Features
- Automatically uses the smallest possible dictionary size for each file without exceeding the given limit.
- Uses the lzip file format; the files produced by plzip are fully compatible with lzip-1.4 or newer, and can be rescued with lziprecover.
- lzip format provides very safe integrity checking and some data recovery means.
- Preserves the access and modification dates, permissions, and, when possible, ownership of the file just as “cp -p” does.
- Can read from some types of non regular files.
Website: www.nongnu.org/lzip/plzip.html
Support: Manual
Developer: Antonio Diaz Diaz
License: GNU General Public License version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version
plzip 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 |
| 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 |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
| Multi-Core Compression Tools | |
|---|---|
| Zstandard | Fast compression algorithm, providing high compression ratios |
| pigz | Parallel implementation of gzip. It's a fully functional replacement for gzip |
| pixz | Parallel indexing XZ compression, fully compatible with XZ. LZMA and LZMA2 |
| PBZIP2 | Parallel implementation of the bzip2 block-sorting file compressor |
| lrzip | Compression utility that excels at compressing large files |
| lbzip2 | Parallel bzip2 compression utility, suited for serial and parallel processing |
| plzip | Massively parallel (multi-threaded) lossless data compressor based on lzlib |
| crabz | Like pigz but written in Rust |
| PXZ | Runs LZMA compression on multiple cores and processors |
Read our verdict in the software roundup.
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