Linux / Unix compress command
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About compress
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Compacts a file so that it is smaller. When compressing a file it will be replaced with a file with the extension .Z, while keeping all the same ownership modes.
compress [-c] [-f] [-v] filenames
| -c | Write to the standard output; no files are changed and no .Z files are created. The behavior of zcat is identical to that of `uncompress -c'. |
| -f | When compressing, 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, prompt to verify whether an existing file .Z file should be overwritten. When uncompressing, do not prompt for overwriting files. If the -f option is not given, and the process is not running in the background, prompt to verify whether an existing file should be overwritten. If the standard input is not a terminal and -f is not given, write a diagnostic message to standard error and exit with a status greater than 0. |
| -v | Shows you how much the file shrank in size. |
| filenames | The name of the file(s) that you wish to compress. |
compress -v bigfile.exe - Would compress bigfile.exe and rename that file to bigfile.exe.Z.
