Mac OS X Panther in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

Name

compress

Synopsis

compress [options] [files]

Reduces the size of one or more files using adaptive Lempel- Ziv coding and move to file .Z. Restore with uncompress or zcat.

With a filename of -, or with no files, compress reads standard input.

Unisys claims a patent on the algorithm used by compress. Today, gzip is generally preferred for file compression.

compress doesn’t preserve resource forks or HFS metadata when compressing files that contain them.

Options

-b n

Limit the number of bits in coding to n; n is 9-16; 16 is the default. A lower n produces a larger, less densely compressed file.

-c

Write to the standard output (don’t change files).

-f

Compress unconditionally; i.e., don’t prompt before overwriting files. Also, compress files even if the resulting file would actually be larger.

-v

Print the resulting percentage of reduction for files.