Provided by: manpages-posix_2.16-1_all 
NAME
compress - compress data
SYNOPSIS
compress [-fv][-b bits][file ...]
compress [-cfv][-b bits][file]
DESCRIPTION
The compress utility shall attempt to reduce the size of the named files by using adaptive Lempel-Ziv
coding algorithm.
Note: Lempel-Ziv is US Patent 4464650, issued to William Eastman, Abraham Lempel, Jacob Ziv, Martin Cohn
on August 7th, 1984, and assigned to Sperry Corporation.
Lempel-Ziv-Welch compression is covered by US Patent 4558302, issued to Terry A. Welch on December 10th,
1985, and assigned to Sperry Corporation.
On systems not supporting adaptive Lempel-Ziv coding algorithm, the input files shall not be changed and
an error value greater than two shall be returned. Except when the output is to the standard output, each
file shall be replaced by one with the extension .Z. If the invoking process has appropriate privileges,
the ownership, modes, access time, and modification time of the original file are preserved. If appending
the .Z to the filename would make the name exceed {NAME_MAX} bytes, the command shall fail. If no files
are specified, the standard input shall be compressed to the standard output.
OPTIONS
The compress utility shall conform to the Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 12.2,
Utility Syntax Guidelines.
The following options shall be supported:
-b bits
Specify the maximum number of bits to use in a code. For a conforming application, the bits
argument shall be:
9 <= bits <= 14
The implementation may allow bits values of greater than 14. The default is 14, 15, or 16.
-c Cause compress to write to the standard output; the input file is not changed, and no .Z files are
created.
-f Force compression of file, even if it does not actually reduce the size of the file, or if the
corresponding file .Z file already exists. If the -f option is not given, and the process is not
running in the background, the user is prompted as to whether an existing file .Z file should be
overwritten.
-v Write the percentage reduction of each file to standard error.
OPERANDS
The following operand shall be supported:
file A pathname of a file to be compressed.
STDIN
The standard input shall be used only if no file operands are specified, or if a file operand is '-' .
INPUT FILES
If file operands are specified, the input files contain the data to be compressed.
ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES
The following environment variables shall affect the execution of compress:
LANG Provide a default value for the internationalization variables that are unset or null. (See the
Base Definitions volume of IEEE Std 1003.1-2001, Section 8.2, Internationalization Variables for
the precedence of internationalization variables used to determine the values of locale
categories.)
LC_ALL If set to a non-empty string value, override the values of all the other internationalization
variables.
LC_CTYPE
Determine the locale for the interpretation of sequences of bytes of text data as characters (for
example, single-byte as opposed to multi-byte characters in arguments).
LC_MESSAGES
Determine the locale that should be used to affect the format and contents of diagnostic messages
written to standard error.
NLSPATH
Determine the location of message catalogs for the processing of LC_MESSAGES .
ASYNCHRONOUS EVENTS
Default.
STDOUT
If no file operands are specified, or if a file operand is '-' , or if the -c option is specified, the
standard output contains the compressed output.
STDERR
The standard error shall be used only for diagnostic and prompt messages and the output from -v.
OUTPUT FILES
The output files shall contain the compressed output. The format of compressed files is unspecified and
interchange of such files between implementations (including access via unspecified file sharing
mechanisms) is not required by IEEE Std 1003.1-2001.
EXTENDED DESCRIPTION
None.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit values shall be returned:
0 Successful completion.
1 An error occurred.
2 One or more files were not compressed because they would have increased in size (and the -f option
was not specified).
>2 An error occurred.
CONSEQUENCES OF ERRORS
The input file shall remain unmodified.
The following sections are informative.
APPLICATION USAGE
The amount of compression obtained depends on the size of the input, the number of bits per code, and the
distribution of common substrings. Typically, text such as source code or English is reduced by 50-60%.
Compression is generally much better than that achieved by Huffman coding or adaptive Huffman coding (
compact), and takes less time to compute.
Although compress strictly follows the default actions upon receipt of a signal or when an error occurs,
some unexpected results may occur. In some implementations it is likely that a partially compressed file
is left in place, alongside its uncompressed input file. Since the general operation of compress is to
delete the uncompressed file only after the .Z file has been successfully filled, an application should
always carefully check the exit status of compress before arbitrarily deleting files that have like-named
neighbors with .Z suffixes.
The limit of 14 on the bits option-argument is to achieve portability to all systems (within the
restrictions imposed by the lack of an explicit published file format). Some implementations based on
16-bit architectures cannot support 15 or 16-bit uncompression.
EXAMPLES
None.
RATIONALE
None.
FUTURE DIRECTIONS
None.
SEE ALSO
uncompress , zcat
COPYRIGHT
Portions of this text are reprinted and reproduced in electronic form from IEEE Std 1003.1, 2003 Edition,
Standard for Information Technology -- Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX), The Open Group Base
Specifications Issue 6, Copyright (C) 2001-2003 by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers,
Inc and The Open Group. In the event of any discrepancy between this version and the original IEEE and
The Open Group Standard, the original IEEE and The Open Group Standard is the referee document. The
original Standard can be obtained online at http://www.opengroup.org/unix/online.html .