Manual: lzip-decompressor

LZIP(1)							User Commands						     LZIP(1)

NAME
       lzip - reduces the size of files

SYNOPSIS
       lzip [options] [files]

DESCRIPTION
       Lzip  is a lossless data compressor with a user interface similar to the one of gzip or bzip2. Lzip uses a simplified
       form of LZMA (Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain-Algorithm) designed to achieve complete  interoperability	between	 implementa‐
       tions. The maximum dictionary size is 512 MiB so that any lzip file can be decompressed on 32-bit machines. Lzip pro‐
       vides  accurate	and  robust 3-factor integrity checking. 'lzip -0' compresses about as fast as gzip, while 'lzip -9'
       compresses most files more than bzip2. Decompression speed is intermediate between gzip and bzip2. Lzip provides bet‐
       ter data recovery capabilities than gzip and bzip2. Lzip has been designed, written, and tested with  great  care  to
       replace gzip and bzip2 as general-purpose compressed format for Unix-like systems.

OPTIONS
       -h     display usage help and exit

       --help display full help and exit

       -V, --version
	      output version information and exit

       -a, --trailing-error
	      exit with error status if trailing data

       -b, --member-size=
	      set member size limit of multimember files

       -c, --stdout
	      write to standard output, keep input files

       -d, --decompress
	      decompress, test compressed file integrity

       -f, --force
	      overwrite existing output files

       -F, --recompress
	      force re-compression of compressed files

       -k, --keep
	      keep (don't delete) input files

       -l, --list
	      print (un)compressed file sizes

       -m, --match-length=
	      set match length limit in bytes [36]

       -o, --output=
	      write to , keep input files

       -q, --quiet
	      suppress all messages

       -s, --dictionary-size=
	      set dictionary size limit in bytes [8 MiB]

       -S, --volume-size=
	      set volume size limit in bytes

       -t, --test
	      test compressed file integrity

       -v, --verbose
	      be verbose (a 2nd -v gives more)

       -0 .. -9
	      set compression level [default 6]

       --loose-trailing
	      allow trailing data seeming corrupt header

       If no file names are given, or if a file is '-', lzip compresses or decompresses from standard input to standard out‐
       put.  Numbers may contain underscore separators between groups of digits and may be followed by a SI or binary multi‐
       plier: 1_234_567kB, 4KiB.  Dictionary sizes 12 to 29 are interpreted as powers of two, meaning 2^12 to 2^29 bytes.

       The  bidimensional parameter space of LZMA can't be mapped to a linear scale optimal for all files. If your files are
       large, very repetitive, etc, you may need to use the options --dictionary-size and --match-length directly to achieve
       optimal performance.

       To extract all the files from archive 'foo.tar.lz', use the commands 'tar -xf foo.tar.lz' or 'lzip -cd  foo.tar.lz  |
       tar -xf -'.

       The ideas embodied in lzip are due to (at least) the following people: Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv (for the LZ algo‐
       rithm),	Andrei	Markov	(for the definition of Markov chains), G.N.N. Martin (for the definition of range encoding),
       Igor Pavlov (for putting all the above together in LZMA), and Julian Seward (for bzip2's CLI).

EXIT STATUS
       0 for a normal exit, 1 for environmental problems (file not found, invalid command-line options, I/O errors, etc),  2
       to  indicate  a	corrupt	 or invalid input file, 3 for an internal consistency error (e.g., bug) which caused lzip to
       panic.

REPORTING BUGS
       Report bugs to lzip-bug@nongnu.org
       Lzip home page: http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/lzip.html

COPYRIGHT
       Copyright © 2026 Antonio Diaz Diaz.  License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2 or later 
       This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.  There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted  by
       law.

SEE ALSO
       The  full  documentation	 for lzip is maintained as a Texinfo manual.  If the info and lzip programs are properly in‐
       stalled at your site, the command

	      info lzip

       should give you access to the complete manual.

lzip 1.26-rc1						February 2026						     LZIP(1)