LUNZIP(1)

📦
version 1.16 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 NAME 💖

okay so bestie, this is lunzip — the decompressor for the lzip format. that's it. that's the whole vibe. 🦋

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

lunzip [options] [files]

🌸 DESCRIPTION 🌸

lunzip is a decompressor for the lzip format, written in C. no cap. and the way it's so small?? that's literally the whole point — it's built for embedded devices and software installers that need to decompress files but don't need any compression capabilities. tiny icon, no compression, just vibes. 💅

so, lzip itself: it's a lossless data compressor with a user interface similar to gzip or bzip2. lzip uses a simplified form of LZMA (Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain-Algorithm), and it's designed so that every implementation can talk to every other one — complete interoperability, periodt. the maximum dictionary size is 512 MiB, so that any lzip file can be decompressed on 32-bit machines. lzip gives you 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 sits right in between gzip and bzip2, and lzip has better data recovery capabilities than both of them. it was designed, written, and tested with great care, all to replace gzip and bzip2 as the general-purpose compressed format for Unix-like systems. main character energy honestly. 👑

now here's the fun part — lunzip has a 'low memory' mode that can decompress any file using as little memory as 50 kB, no matter how big the dictionary size used to compress it was. 😭 to activate it, you specify the size of the output buffer with the option --buffer-size, and then lunzip will use the decompressed file as the dictionary for distances beyond the buffer size. of course, the larger the difference between the buffer size and the dictionary size, the more accesses to disc are needed and the slower the decompression is. ngl that's just the tradeoff bestie.

⚠️ this 'low memory' mode only works when decompressing to a regular file, and it's intended for systems without enough memory (RAM + swap) to keep the whole dictionary at once.

🎀 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
  • -c, --stdout — write to standard output, keep input files
  • -d, --decompress — decompress (this is the default)
  • -f, --force — overwrite existing output files
  • -k, --keep — keep (don't delete) input files
  • -l, --list — print (un)compressed file sizes
  • -o, --output=<file> — write to <file>, keep input files
  • -q, --quiet — suppress all messages
  • -t, --test — test compressed file integrity
  • -u, --buffer-size=<bytes> — set output buffer size in bytes
  • -v, --verbose — be verbose (a 2nd -v gives more)
  • --loose-trailing — allow trailing data seeming corrupt header

if no file names are given, or if a file is '-', lunzip decompresses from standard input to standard output. 🫶

numbers may contain underscore separators between groups of digits and may be followed by a SI or binary multiplier: 1_234_567kB, 4KiB. and buffer sizes 12 to 29 are interpreted as powers of two, meaning 2^12 to 2^29 bytes. ikyk. ✨

to extract all the files from archive foo.tar.lz, use the commands:

tar -xf foo.tar.lz

or

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

the ideas embodied in lunzip 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), and Julian Seward (for bzip2's CLI). legends, all of them. 🌈

💀 EXIT STATUS 💀

  • 0 — for a normal exit. slay.
  • 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 lunzip to panic. 😭

🐛 REPORTING BUGS 🐛

found a bug? report bugs to lzip-bug@nongnu.org 📧

Lunzip home page: http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/lunzip.html

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. fr fr.

and that's the whole page bestie!! written by the lunzip girlies for lunzip version 1.16, dated March 2026. go decompress something cute today 💅✨🎀🦋

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