PIXZ(1)

📦
version 1.0.7 · 7 versions
, in ubuntu resolute, ubuntu stonking

💖 PIXZ(1) — the manual page, but make it slay 💖

okay bestie, sit down, we're learning pixz today ✨ it's a parallel, indexed xz compressor, and honestly? she's iconic.

✨ NAME ✨

pixz — a parallel, indexed xz compressor 🦋

🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

pixz [OPTIONS] [INPUT [OUTPUT]]

💅 DESCRIPTION 💅

So here's the tea: pixz compresses and decompresses files using multiple processors — like, she's not doing this alone, she brought the whole group chat. ✨

And the way that it does something extra? If the input looks like a tar(1) archive, it also creates an index of every single file in that archive. Which means you can extract just a small segment of the tarball without needing to decompress the entire thing first. no cap. that's the whole flex. 👑

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

Real talk first: by default pixz uses standard input and standard output, unless you hand her INPUT and OUTPUT arguments. And heads up — if pixz gets an input but no output, she will delete the input once she's done. 😭 she's efficient like that.

  • -d — Decompress instead of compress. basically the uno reverse card 🦋
  • -t — Force non-tarball mode. By default pixz auto-detects tar data and, if she finds it, slides right into tarball mode. But when you're compressing in non-tarball mode, no archive index gets created. And when you're decompressing, fast extraction? not available. 💀
  • -l — List the archive contents. In tarball mode she lists the files in the tarball; in non-tarball mode she lists the blocks of compressed data.
  • -x PATH — Extract certain members from an archive, quickly. Every member whose path begins with PATH gets extracted.
  • -i INPUT — Use INPUT as the input.
  • -o OUTPUT — Use OUTPUT as the output.
  • -# — Set the compression level, from -0 (lowest compression, fastest) all the way to -9 (highest compression, slowest). pick your fighter 💅
  • -e — Use "extreme" compression. which is, and I'm quoting the vibes here, much slower and only yields a marginal decrease in size. 😭 girl is doing the most for crumbs.
  • -p CPUS — Set the number of CPU cores to use. By default pixz will use the number of cores on the system. she knows her own strength 💪
  • -f FRACTION — Set the size of each compression block, relative to the LZMA dictionary size (default is 2.0). Higher values give better compression ratios, but they use more memory and make random access less efficient. And values less than 1.0? not very efficient, bestie. 🙈
  • -q SIZE — Set the number of blocks to allocate for the compression queue (default is 1.3 * cores + 2, rounded up). Higher values give better throughput, up to a point, but use more memory. And values less than the number of cores will make some cores sit idle. put those cores to work!! ⭐
  • -h — Show pixz's online help.

🌈 EXAMPLES 🌈

  • pixz < myfile > myfile.xz Compress a file with pixz. classic.
  • pixz myfile Compress to myfile.pxz, removing the original. (yes, removing. she said what she said.)
  • tar -Ipixz -cf output.tpxz directory Make tar use pixz for compression. dream team fr fr 🫶
  • pixz -x path/to/file < input.tpxz | tar x Extract one file from an archive, quickly. zoom 🧚

👑 AUTHOR 👑

pixz is written by Dave Vasilevsky. ty for your service king 🫡

🌸 RESOURCES 🌸

Copyright © 2009-2010 Dave Vasilevsky. Use of this software is granted under the FreeBSD License.

⭐ SEE ALSO ⭐

xz(1), tar(1) — go read those next, bestie, one of them is literally in the name 💖

and that's the whole page!! 🎀 this was pixz, version 1.0.7, dated 01/27/2026 — mwah, slay, periodt ✨💅🦋

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