CLZIP(1)

📦
version 1.16 · 6 versions
, in nixos 26.05, nixpkgs unstable, ubuntu stonking

💖 CLZIP(1) 💖 — the clzip manual page, bestie edition

okay so you're looking at the clzip manual, from the User Commands section of the manual, and honestly? she's iconic. let's get into it 🫶

✨ NAME ✨

clzip — reduces the size of files 💅

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

clzip [options] [files]

that's it. that's the whole vibe.

🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so, Clzip is a C language version of lzip, made specifically for systems that are out here lacking a C++ compiler 😭. yes, she's the C-coded sister.

And lzip itself? A lossless data compressor with a user interface similar to the one of gzip or bzip2 — like, same energy, better results 💖.

Lzip uses a simplified form of LZMA (Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain-Algorithm) and is designed to achieve complete interoperability between implementations. The maximum dictionary size is 512 MiB so that any lzip file can be decompressed on 32-bit machines. Not her being thoughtful about the 32-bit girlies 🥹👑

She provides accurate and robust 3-factor integrity checking. Three factors. She's thorough like that.

Compression tea ☕:

  • lzip -0 compresses about as fast as gzip
  • lzip -9 compresses most files more than bzip2

Decompression speed is intermediate between gzip and bzip2. And she provides better data recovery capabilities than gzip and bzip2 — no cap.

Lzip has been designed, written, and tested with great care to replace gzip and bzip2 as general-purpose compressed format for Unix-like systems. main character energy fr fr 🔥

💅 OPTIONS 💅

  • -h — display usage help and exit. short and sweet bestie.
  • --help — display full help and exit. the deluxe version ✨
  • -V, --version — output version information and exit.
  • -a, --trailing-error — exit with error status if trailing data.
  • -b, --member-size=<bytes> — 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=<bytes> — set match length limit in bytes [36].
  • -o, --output=<file> — write to <file>, keep input files.
  • -q, --quiet — suppress all messages 🤫
  • -s, --dictionary-size=<bytes> — set dictionary size limit in bytes [8 MiB].
  • -S, --volume-size=<bytes> — 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.

🎀 the deets on how she actually behaves 🎀

Clzip replaces every file with a (de)compressed version of itself. glow-up, but make it destructive 💀

If no file names are given, or if a file is '-', clzip compresses or decompresses from standard input to standard output. piped girlies, this one's for you 🫶

Numbers may contain underscore separators between groups of digits and may be followed by a SI or binary multiplier: 1_234_567kB, 4KiB. So cute, so readable 🥰

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

clzip -cd foo.tar.lz | tar -xf -

both valid, pick your fighter 💖

👑 the lore (credit where it's due) 👑

The ideas embodied in clzip are due to (at least) the following people:

  • Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv — for the LZ algorithm
  • 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
  • Julian Seward — for bzip2's CLI

legends, all of them 🌈

⭐ 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 clzip to panic 🙈

📣 REPORTING BUGS 📣

Report bugs to lzip-bug@nongnu.org

Clzip home page: http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/clzip.html

(be nice, she's trying 💜)

Copyright © 2026 Antonio Diaz Diaz. License GPLv2+: GNU GPL version 2 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. read that again bestie, NO WARRANTY 🫠

🌟 SEE ALSO 🌟

The full documentation for clzip is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and clzip programs are properly installed at your site, the command

info clzip

should give you access to the complete manual. go read it, iykyk 📖✨

and that's the whole page, bestie 💖 this is clzip 1.16, dated March 2026 — go compress something and slay 🎀🦋💅

📦 where this page comes from