PDLZIP(1)

📦
version 1.15 · 5 versions
, in ubuntu stonking

💖 PDLZIP(1) 💖

okay bestie, sit down, we're learning pdlzip today — it's a User Command, it lives in section 1 of the manual, and it's about to make your files smol. 🎀

✨ NAME ✨

pdlzip — reduces the size of files 🦋

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

pdlzip [options] [files]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

So. Pdlzip is a permissively licensed implementation of the lzip data compressor. Who is it for? It's for the girlies who can't distribute (or even use, which is wild) GPL licensed Free Software. The name pdlzip comes from 'public domain lzip'. And it's written in C. 💀 (yes, C, she's vintage like that)

Lzip itself is a lossless data compressor with a user interface similar to the one of gzip or bzip2. Lowkey iconic. It uses a simplified form of LZMA (Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain-Algorithm) and it's designed to achieve complete interoperability between implementations — everyone plays nice, no drama, periodt. 💖 The max dictionary size is 512 MiB so that any lzip file can be decompressed on 32-bit machines. Inclusive king behavior honestly. 👑

Lzip provides 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. And lzip provides better 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. Not me hyping up a compressor, but here we are. 😭

Now for the side quest: Pdlzip is also able to decompress legacy lzma-alone (.lzma) files.

⚠️ Lzma-alone is a very bad format; it is essentially a raw LZMA stream. If you keep any lzma-alone files, it is advisable to recompress them to lzip format. Lziprecover can convert some lzma-alone files to lzip format without recompressing.

not me calling a whole format bad but like. it IS bad. the facts are the facts bestie. 🙈

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

  • -h — display usage help and exit 🫶
  • --help — display full help and exit (the deluxe version, she ate)
  • -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, 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 💖
  • -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]
  • -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

okay so more lore: If no file names are given, or if a file is -, pdlzip compresses or 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. 🍓

Dictionary sizes 12 to 27 are interpreted as powers of two, meaning 2^12 to 2^27 bytes. iykyk.

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. For example, -9m64 usually compresses executables more (and faster) than -9. 🦋 tuning queen energy.

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

tar -xf foo.tar.lz

or

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

Pdlzip includes public domain compression/decompression code from the LZMA SDK (Software Development Kit) written by Igor Pavlov. 👑

🌈 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 pdlzip to panic 😭

🦋 REPORTING BUGS 🦋

Report bugs to lzip-bug@nongnu.org 💌

Pdlzip home page: http://www.nongnu.org/lzip/pdlzip.html

fr fr if something's broken, tell them, they wanna know bestie.

Copyright © 2026 Antonio Diaz Diaz. Public Domain 2009 Igor Pavlov.

License 2-clause BSD.

This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.

There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.

⚠️ NO WARRANTY — like, zero, none, to the extent permitted by law. read it and weep (or don't, it's fine, just don't sue).

and that's the whole vibe check, bestie 💖✨🎀

This was pdlzip version 1.15, from March 2026, and it came to you straight from the PDLZIP(1) manual page. slay, stay compressed, hydrate. 💅🌸🫶

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