path: root/doc/clzip.info

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INFO-DIR-SECTION Data Compression
START-INFO-DIR-ENTRY
* Clzip: (clzip).               LZMA lossless data compressor
END-INFO-DIR-ENTRY


File: clzip.info,  Node: Top,  Next: Introduction,  Up: (dir)

Clzip Manual
************

This manual is for Clzip (version 1.7-pre1, 26 February 2015).

* Menu:

* Introduction::           Purpose and features of clzip
* Algorithm::              How clzip compresses the data
* Invoking clzip::         Command line interface
* File format::            Detailed format of the compressed file
* Examples::               A small tutorial with examples
* Problems::               Reporting bugs
* Concept index::          Index of concepts


   Copyright (C) 2010-2015 Antonio Diaz Diaz.

   This manual is free documentation: you have unlimited permission to
copy, distribute and modify it.


File: clzip.info,  Node: Introduction,  Next: Algorithm,  Prev: Top,  Up: Top

1 Introduction
**************

Clzip is a lossless data compressor with a user interface similar to the
one of gzip or bzip2. Clzip is about as fast as gzip, compresses most
files more than bzip2, and is better than both from a data recovery
perspective. Clzip is a clean implementation of the LZMA
(Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain-Algorithm) "algorithm".

   Clzip uses the lzip file format; the files produced by clzip are
fully compatible with lzip-1.4 or newer, and can be rescued with
lziprecover.  Clzip is in fact a C language version of lzip, intended
for embedded devices or systems lacking a C++ compiler.

   The lzip file format is designed for data sharing and long-term
archiving, taking into account both data integrity and decoder
availability:

   * The lzip format provides very safe integrity checking and some data
     recovery means. The lziprecover program can repair bit-flip errors
     (one of the most common forms of data corruption) in lzip files,
     and provides data recovery capabilities, including error-checked
     merging of damaged copies of a file.

   * The lzip format is as simple as possible (but not simpler). The
     lzip manual provides the code of a simple decompressor along with
     a detailed explanation of how it works, so that with the only help
     of the lzip manual it would be possible for a digital
     archaeologist to extract the data from a lzip file long after
     quantum computers eventually render LZMA obsolete.

   * Additionally the lzip reference implementation is copylefted, which
     guarantees that it will remain free forever.

   A nice feature of the lzip format is that a corrupt byte is easier to
repair the nearer it is from the beginning of the file. Therefore, with
the help of lziprecover, losing an entire archive just because of a
corrupt byte near the beginning is a thing of the past.

   The member trailer stores the 32-bit CRC of the original data, the
size of the original data and the size of the member. These values,
together with the value remaining in the range decoder and the
end-of-stream marker, provide a 4 factor integrity checking which
guarantees that the decompressed version of the data is identical to
the original. This guards against corruption of the compressed data,
and against undetected bugs in clzip (hopefully very unlikely). The
chances of data corruption going undetected are microscopic. Be aware,
though, that the check occurs upon decompression, so it can only tell
you that something is wrong. It can't help you recover the original
uncompressed data.

   Clzip uses the same well-defined exit status values used by lzip and
bzip2, which makes it safer than compressors returning ambiguous warning
values (like gzip) when it is used as a back end for other programs like
tar or zutils.

   The amount of memory required for compression is about 1 or 2 times
the dictionary size limit (1 if input file size is less than dictionary
size limit, else 2) plus 9 times the dictionary size really used. The
option '-0' is special and only requires about 1.5 MiB at most. The
amount of memory required for decompression is about 46 kB larger than
the dictionary size really used.

   Clzip will automatically use the smallest possible dictionary size
for each file without exceeding the given limit. Keep in mind that the
decompression memory requirement is affected at compression time by the
choice of dictionary size limit.

   When compressing, clzip replaces every file given in the command line
with a compressed version of itself, with the name "original_name.lz".
When decompressing, clzip attempts to guess the name for the
decompressed file from that of the compressed file as follows:

filename.lz    becomes   filename
filename.tlz   becomes   filename.tar
anyothername   becomes   anyothername.out

   (De)compressing a file is much like copying or moving it; therefore
clzip preserves the access and modification dates, permissions, and,
when possible, ownership of the file just as "cp -p" does. (If the user
ID or the group ID can't be duplicated, the file permission bits
S_ISUID and S_ISGID are cleared).

   Clzip is able to read from some types of non regular files if the
'--stdout' option is specified.

   If no file names are specified, clzip compresses (or decompresses)
from standard input to standard output. In this case, clzip will
decline to write compressed output to a terminal, as this would be
entirely incomprehensible and therefore pointless.

   Clzip will correctly decompress a file which is the concatenation of
two or more compressed files. The result is the concatenation of the
corresponding uncompressed files. Integrity testing of concatenated
compressed files is also supported.

   Clzip can produce multi-member files and safely recover, with
lziprecover, the undamaged members in case of file damage. Clzip can
also split the compressed output in volumes of a given size, even when
reading from standard input. This allows the direct creation of
multivolume compressed tar archives.

   Clzip is able to compress and decompress streams of unlimited size by
automatically creating multi-member output. The members so created are
large, about 64 PiB each.


File: clzip.info,  Node: Algorithm,  Next: Invoking clzip,  Prev: Introduction,  Up: Top

2 Algorithm
***********

There is no such thing as a "LZMA algorithm"; it is more like a "LZMA
coding scheme". For example, the option '-0' of lzip uses the scheme in
almost the simplest way possible; issuing the longest match it can find,
or a literal byte if it can't find a match. Inversely, a much more
elaborated way of finding coding sequences of minimum price than the one
currently used by lzip could be developed, and the resulting sequence
could also be coded using the LZMA coding scheme.

   Clzip currently implements two variants of the LZMA algorithm; fast
(used by option -0) and normal (used by all other compression levels).

   The high compression of LZMA comes from combining two basic,
well-proven compression ideas: sliding dictionaries (LZ77/78) and
markov models (the thing used by every compression algorithm that uses
a range encoder or similar order-0 entropy coder as its last stage)
with segregation of contexts according to what the bits are used for.

   Clzip is a two stage compressor. The first stage is a Lempel-Ziv
coder, which reduces redundancy by translating chunks of data to their
corresponding distance-length pairs. The second stage is a range encoder
that uses a different probability model for each type of data;
distances, lengths, literal bytes, etc.

   Here is how it works, step by step:

   1) The member header is written to the output stream.

   2) The first byte is coded literally, because there are no previous
bytes to which the match finder can refer to.

   3) The main encoder advances to the next byte in the input data and
calls the match finder.

   4) The match finder fills an array with the minimum distances before
the current byte where a match of a given length can be found.

   5) Go back to step 3 until a sequence (formed of pairs, repeated
distances and literal bytes) of minimum price has been formed. Where the
price represents the number of output bits produced.

   6) The range encoder encodes the sequence produced by the main
encoder and sends the produced bytes to the output stream.

   7) Go back to step 3 until the input data are finished or until the
member or volume size limits are reached.

   8) The range encoder is flushed.

   9) The member trailer is written to the output stream.

   10) If there are more data to compress, go back to step 1.


The ideas embodied in clzip are due to (at least) the following people:
Abraham Lempel and Jacob Ziv (for the LZ algorithm), Andrey 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).


File: clzip.info,  Node: Invoking clzip,  Next: File format,  Prev: Algorithm,  Up: Top

3 Invoking clzip
****************

The format for running clzip is:

     clzip [OPTIONS] [FILES]

   Clzip supports the following options:

'-h'
'--help'
     Print an informative help message describing the options and exit.

'-V'
'--version'
     Print the version number of clzip on the standard output and exit.

'-b BYTES'
'--member-size=BYTES'
     Set the member size limit to BYTES. A small member size may
     degrade compression ratio, so use it only when needed. Valid values
     range from 100 kB to 64 PiB. Defaults to 64 PiB.

'-c'
'--stdout'
     Compress or decompress to standard output. Needed when reading
     from a named pipe (fifo) or from a device. Use it to recover as
     much of the uncompressed data as possible when decompressing a
     corrupt file.

'-d'
'--decompress'
     Decompress.

'-f'
'--force'
     Force overwrite of output files.

'-F'
'--recompress'
     Force recompression of files whose name already has the '.lz' or
     '.tlz' suffix.

'-k'
'--keep'
     Keep (don't delete) input files during compression or
     decompression.

'-m BYTES'
'--match-length=BYTES'
     Set the match length limit in bytes. After a match this long is
     found, the search is finished. Valid values range from 5 to 273.
     Larger values usually give better compression ratios but longer
     compression times.

'-o FILE'
'--output=FILE'
     When reading from standard input and '--stdout' has not been
     specified, use 'FILE' as the virtual name of the uncompressed
     file. This produces a file named 'FILE' when decompressing, a file
     named 'FILE.lz' when compressing, and several files named
     'FILE00001.lz', 'FILE00002.lz', etc, when compressing and
     splitting the output in volumes.

'-q'
'--quiet'
     Quiet operation. Suppress all messages.

'-s BYTES'
'--dictionary-size=BYTES'
     Set the dictionary size limit in bytes. Valid values range from 4
     KiB to 512 MiB. Clzip will use the smallest possible dictionary
     size for each file without exceeding this limit. Note that
     dictionary sizes are quantized. If the specified size does not
     match one of the valid sizes, it will be rounded upwards by adding
     up to (BYTES / 16) to it.

     For maximum compression you should use a dictionary size limit as
     large as possible, but keep in mind that the decompression memory
     requirement is affected at compression time by the choice of
     dictionary size limit.

'-S BYTES'
'--volume-size=BYTES'
     Split the compressed output into several volume files with names
     'original_name00001.lz', 'original_name00002.lz', etc, and set the
     volume size limit to BYTES. Each volume is a complete, maybe
     multi-member, lzip file. A small volume size may degrade
     compression ratio, so use it only when needed. Valid values range
     from 100 kB to 4 EiB.

'-t'
'--test'
     Check integrity of the specified file(s), but don't decompress
     them.  This really performs a trial decompression and throws away
     the result.  Use it together with '-v' to see information about
     the file.

'-v'
'--verbose'
     Verbose mode.
     When compressing, show the compression ratio for each file
     processed. A second '-v' shows the progress of compression.
     When decompressing or testing, further -v's (up to 4) increase the
     verbosity level, showing status, compression ratio, dictionary
     size, and trailer contents (CRC, data size, member size).

'-0 .. -9'
     Set the compression parameters (dictionary size and match length
     limit) as shown in the table below. Note that '-9' can be much
     slower than '-0'. These options have no effect when decompressing.

     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 '--match-length' and
     '--dictionary-size' options directly to achieve optimal
     performance.

     Level   Dictionary size   Match length limit
     -0      64 KiB            16 bytes
     -1      1 MiB             5 bytes
     -2      1.5 MiB           6 bytes
     -3      2 MiB             8 bytes
     -4      3 MiB             12 bytes
     -5      4 MiB             20 bytes
     -6      8 MiB             36 bytes
     -7      16 MiB            68 bytes
     -8      24 MiB            132 bytes
     -9      32 MiB            273 bytes

'--fast'
'--best'
     Aliases for GNU gzip compatibility.


   Numbers given as arguments to options may be followed by a multiplier
and an optional 'B' for "byte".

   Table of SI and binary prefixes (unit multipliers):

Prefix   Value                     |   Prefix   Value
k        kilobyte  (10^3 = 1000)   |   Ki       kibibyte (2^10 = 1024)
M        megabyte  (10^6)          |   Mi       mebibyte (2^20)
G        gigabyte  (10^9)          |   Gi       gibibyte (2^30)
T        terabyte  (10^12)         |   Ti       tebibyte (2^40)
P        petabyte  (10^15)         |   Pi       pebibyte (2^50)
E        exabyte   (10^18)         |   Ei       exbibyte (2^60)
Z        zettabyte (10^21)         |   Zi       zebibyte (2^70)
Y        yottabyte (10^24)         |   Yi       yobibyte (2^80)


   Exit status: 0 for a normal exit, 1 for environmental problems (file
not found, invalid flags, I/O errors, etc), 2 to indicate a corrupt or
invalid input file, 3 for an internal consistency error (eg, bug) which
caused clzip to panic.


File: clzip.info,  Node: File format,  Next: Examples,  Prev: Invoking clzip,  Up: Top

4 File format
*************

Perfection is reached, not when there is no longer anything to add, but
when there is no longer anything to take away.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery


   In the diagram below, a box like this:
+---+
|   | <-- the vertical bars might be missing
+---+

   represents one byte; a box like this:
+==============+
|              |
+==============+

   represents a variable number of bytes.


   A lzip file consists of a series of "members" (compressed data sets).
The members simply appear one after another in the file, with no
additional information before, between, or after them.

   Each member has the following structure:
+--+--+--+--+----+----+=============+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
| ID string | VN | DS | Lzma stream | CRC32 |   Data size   |  Member size  |
+--+--+--+--+----+----+=============+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+

   All multibyte values are stored in little endian order.

'ID string'
     A four byte string, identifying the lzip format, with the value
     "LZIP" (0x4C, 0x5A, 0x49, 0x50).

'VN (version number, 1 byte)'
     Just in case something needs to be modified in the future. 1 for
     now.

'DS (coded dictionary size, 1 byte)'
     Lzip divides the distance between any two powers of 2 into 8
     equally spaced intervals, named "wedges". The dictionary size is
     calculated by taking a power of 2 (the base size) and substracting
     from it a number of wedges between 0 and 7. The size of a wedge is
     (base_size / 16).
     Bits 4-0 contain the base 2 logarithm of the base size (12 to 29).
     Bits 7-5 contain the number of wedges (0 to 7) to substract from
     the base size to obtain the dictionary size.
     Example: 0xD3 = 2^19 - 6 * 2^15 = 512 KiB - 6 * 32 KiB = 320 KiB
     Valid values for dictionary size range from 4 KiB to 512 MiB.

'Lzma stream'
     The lzma stream, finished by an end of stream marker. Uses default
     values for encoder properties.  *Note Stream format: (lzip)Stream
     format, for a complete description.

'CRC32 (4 bytes)'
     CRC of the uncompressed original data.

'Data size (8 bytes)'
     Size of the uncompressed original data.

'Member size (8 bytes)'
     Total size of the member, including header and trailer. This field
     acts as a distributed index, allows the verification of stream
     integrity, and facilitates safe recovery of undamaged members from
     multi-member files.



File: clzip.info,  Node: Examples,  Next: Problems,  Prev: File format,  Up: Top

5 A small tutorial with examples
********************************

WARNING! Even if clzip is bug-free, other causes may result in a corrupt
compressed file (bugs in the system libraries, memory errors, etc).
Therefore, if the data you are going to compress are important, give the
'--keep' option to clzip and do not remove the original file until you
verify the compressed file with a command like
'clzip -cd file.lz | cmp file -'.


Example 1: Replace a regular file with its compressed version 'file.lz'
and show the compression ratio.

     clzip -v file


Example 2: Like example 1 but the created 'file.lz' is multi-member
with a member size of 1 MiB. The compression ratio is not shown.

     clzip -b 1MiB file


Example 3: Restore a regular file from its compressed version
'file.lz'. If the operation is successful, 'file.lz' is removed.

     clzip -d file.lz


Example 4: Verify the integrity of the compressed file 'file.lz' and
show status.

     clzip -tv file.lz


Example 5: Compress a whole floppy in /dev/fd0 and send the output to
'file.lz'.

     clzip -c /dev/fd0 > file.lz


Example 6: Decompress 'file.lz' partially until 10 KiB of decompressed
data are produced.

     clzip -cd file.lz | dd bs=1024 count=10


Example 7: Decompress 'file.lz' partially from decompressed byte 10000
to decompressed byte 15000 (5000 bytes are produced).

     clzip -cd file.lz | dd bs=1000 skip=10 count=5


Example 8: Create a multivolume compressed tar archive with a volume
size of 1440 KiB.

     tar -c some_directory | clzip -S 1440KiB -o volume_name


Example 9: Extract a multivolume compressed tar archive.

     clzip -cd volume_name*.lz | tar -xf -


Example 10: Create a multivolume compressed backup of a large database
file with a volume size of 650 MB, where each volume is a multi-member
file with a member size of 32 MiB.

     clzip -b 32MiB -S 650MB big_db


File: clzip.info,  Node: Problems,  Next: Concept index,  Prev: Examples,  Up: Top

6 Reporting bugs
****************

There are probably bugs in clzip. There are certainly errors and
omissions in this manual. If you report them, they will get fixed. If
you don't, no one will ever know about them and they will remain unfixed
for all eternity, if not longer.

   If you find a bug in clzip, please send electronic mail to
<lzip-bug@nongnu.org>. Include the version number, which you can find
by running 'clzip --version'.


File: clzip.info,  Node: Concept index,  Prev: Problems,  Up: Top

Concept index
*************

[index]
* Menu:

* algorithm:                             Algorithm.             (line 6)
* bugs:                                  Problems.              (line 6)
* examples:                              Examples.              (line 6)
* file format:                           File format.           (line 6)
* getting help:                          Problems.              (line 6)
* introduction:                          Introduction.          (line 6)
* invoking:                              Invoking clzip.        (line 6)
* options:                               Invoking clzip.        (line 6)
* usage:                                 Invoking clzip.        (line 6)
* version:                               Invoking clzip.        (line 6)



Tag Table:
Node: Top210
Node: Introduction903
Node: Algorithm6200
Node: Invoking clzip8963
Node: File format14514
Node: Examples17046
Node: Problems19015
Node: Concept index19541

End Tag Table


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