See the file INSTALL for compilation and installation instructions.

Description

Pdlzip is a permissively licensed implementation of the lzip data
compressor, intended for those who can't distribute (or even use) GPL
licensed Free Software. The name of pdlzip comes from 'public domain lzip'.
Pdlzip is written in C.

Lzip is a lossless data compressor with a user interface similar to the one
of gzip or bzip2. Lzip uses a simplified form of LZMA (Lempel-Ziv-Markov
chain-Algorithm) 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. 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. 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.

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

   * The program lziprecover 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 source 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.

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.

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

Pdlzip uses Arg_parser for command-line argument parsing:
http://www.nongnu.org/arg-parser/arg_parser.html


Copyright (C) 2010-2025 Antonio Diaz Diaz.

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

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