lz4(1) User Commands lz4(1)NAME
lz4, unlz4, lz4cat - Compress or decompress .lz4 files
SYNOPSISlz4 [OPTIONS] [-|INPUT-FILE] <OUTPUT-FILE>
unlz4 is equivalent to lz4-d
lz4cat is equivalent to lz4-dc
When writing scripts that need to decompress files, it is recommended
to always use the name lz4 with appropriate arguments (lz4 -d or lz4
-dc) instead of the names unlz4 and lz4cat.
DESCRIPTIONlz4 is an extremely fast lossless compression algorithm, based on byte-
aligned LZ77 family of compression scheme. lz4 offers compression
speeds of 400 MB/s per core, linearly scalable with multi-core CPUs.
It features an extremely fast decoder, with speed in multiple GB/s per
core, typically reaching RAM speed limit on multi-core systems. lz4
supports a command line syntax similar to gzip(1). The native file
format is the .lz4 format.
Concatenation of .lz4 files
It is possible to concatenate .lz4 files as is. lz4 will decompress
such files as if they were a single .lz4 file. For example:
lz4 file1 > foo.lz4
lz4 file2 >> foo.lz4
then
lz4cat foo.lz4
is equivalent to :
cat file1 file2
OPTIONS
Short commands concatenation
In some cases, some options can be expressed using short command -x or
long command --long-word . Short commands can be concatenated
together. For example, -d -c is equivalent to -dc . Long commands
cannot be concatenated. They must be clearly separated by a space.
Multiple commands
When multiple contradictory commands are issued on a same command line,
only the latest one will be applied.
Operation mode
-z, --compress
Compress. This is the default operation mode when no operation
mode option is specified , no other operation mode is implied
from the command name (for example, unlz4 implies --decompress
), nor from the input file name (for example, a file extension
.lz4 implies --decompress by default). -z can also be used to
force compression of an already compressed .lz4 file.
-d, --decompress, --uncompress
Decompress. --decompress is also the default operation when the
input filename has an .lz4 extensionq
-t, --test
Test the integrity of compressed .lz4 files. The decompressed
data is discarded. No files are created nor removed.
Operation modifiers
-1
fast compression (default)
-9
high compression
-f, --[no-]force
This option has several effects:
· If the target file already exists, overwrite it without
prompting.
· When used with --decompress and lz4 cannot recognize the type
of the source file, copy the source file as is to standard
output. This allows lz4cat --force to be used like cat(1)
for files that have not been compressed with lz4.
-c, --stdout, --to-stdout
force write to standard output, even if it is the console
-m, --multiple
Multiple file names.
By default, the second filename is used as the output filename
for the compressed file.
With -m , you can specify any number of input filenames. Each
of them will be compressed independently, and the resulting name
of the compressed file will be filename.lz4
-B#
block size [4-7](default : 7)
B4= 64KB ; B5= 256KB ; B6= 1MB ; B7= 4MB
-BD
block dependency (improve compression ratio)
--[no-]frame-crc
select frame checksum (default:enabled)
--[no-]content-size
header includes original size (default:not present)
Note : this option can only be activated when the original size
can be determined, hence for a file. It won't work with unknown
source size, such as stdin or pipe.
--[no-]sparse
sparse mode support (default:enabled on file, disabled on
stdout)
-l
use Legacy format (useful for Linux Kernel compression)
Other options
-v, --verbose
verbose mode
-q, --quiet
suppress warnings; specify twice to suppress errors too
-h/-H
display help/long help and exit
-V, --version
display Version number and exit
-k, --keep
Don't delete source file. This is default behavior anyway, so
this option is just for compatibility with gzip/xz.
-b
benchmark file(s)
-i#
iteration loops [1-9](default : 3), benchmark mode only
BUGS
Report bugs at: https://github.com/Cyan4973/lz4
AUTHOR
Yann Collet
lz4 2015-03-21 lz4(1)
