xz(1) - man - phpMan

 


xz(1)
NAME SYNOPSIS COMMAND ALIASES DESCRIPTION OPTIONS ROBOT MODE EXIT STATUS ENVIRONMENT LZMA UTILS COMPATIBILITY NOTES EXAMPLES SEE ALSO
XZ(1)                                         XZ Utils                                         XZ(1)



NAME
       xz, unxz, xzcat, lzma, unlzma, lzcat - Compress or decompress .xz and .lzma files

SYNOPSIS
       xz [option...]  [file...]

COMMAND ALIASES
       unxz is equivalent to xz --decompress.
       xzcat is equivalent to xz --decompress --stdout.
       lzma is equivalent to xz --format=lzma.
       unlzma is equivalent to xz --format=lzma --decompress.
       lzcat is equivalent to xz --format=lzma --decompress --stdout.

       When  writing scripts that need to decompress files, it is recommended to always use the name
       xz with appropriate arguments (xz -d or xz -dc) instead of the names unxz and xzcat.

DESCRIPTION
       xz is a general-purpose data compression tool with command line syntax similar to gzip(1) and
       bzip2(1).  The native file format is the .xz format, but the legacy .lzma format used by LZMA
       Utils and raw compressed streams with no container format headers are also supported.

       xz compresses or decompresses each file according to the  selected  operation  mode.   If  no
       files  are  given or file is -, xz reads from standard input and writes the processed data to
       standard output.  xz will refuse (display an error and skip the  file)  to  write  compressed
       data  to  standard  output if it is a terminal.  Similarly, xz will refuse to read compressed
       data from standard input if it is a terminal.

       Unless --stdout is specified, files other than - are written to a new file whose name is  de‐
       rived from the source file name:

       •  When  compressing,  the suffix of the target file format (.xz or .lzma) is appended to the
          source filename to get the target filename.

       •  When decompressing, the .xz or .lzma suffix is removed from the filename to get the target
          filename.   xz also recognizes the suffixes .txz and .tlz, and replaces them with the .tar
          suffix.

       If the target file already exists, an error is displayed and the file is skipped.

       Unless writing to standard output, xz will display a warning and skip the file if any of  the
       following applies:

       •  File  is  not a regular file.  Symbolic links are not followed, and thus they are not con‐
          sidered to be regular files.

       •  File has more than one hard link.

       •  File has setuid, setgid, or sticky bit set.

       •  The operation mode is set to compress and the file already has a suffix of the target file
          format (.xz or .txz when compressing to the .xz format, and .lzma or .tlz when compressing
          to the .lzma format).

       •  The operation mode is set to decompress and the file doesn't have a suffix of any  of  the
          supported file formats (.xz, .txz, .lzma, or .tlz).

       After successfully compressing or decompressing the file, xz copies the owner, group, permis‐
       sions, access time, and modification time from the source file to the target file.  If  copy‐
       ing  the group fails, the permissions are modified so that the target file doesn't become ac‐
       cessible to users who didn't have permission to access the source file.  xz  doesn't  support
       copying other metadata like access control lists or extended attributes yet.

       Once  the  target file has been successfully closed, the source file is removed unless --keep
       was specified.  The source file is never removed if the output is written to standard output.

       Sending SIGINFO or SIGUSR1 to the xz process makes it print progress information to  standard
       error.   This  has  only limited use since when standard error is a terminal, using --verbose
       will display an automatically updating progress indicator.

   Memory usage
       The memory usage of xz varies from a few hundred kilobytes to several gigabytes depending  on
       the compression settings.  The settings used when compressing a file determine the memory re‐
       quirements of the decompressor.  Typically the decompressor needs 5 % to 20 % of  the  amount
       of  memory  that  the compressor needed when creating the file.  For example, decompressing a
       file created with xz -9 currently requires 65 MiB of memory.  Still, it is possible  to  have
       .xz files that require several gigabytes of memory to decompress.

       Especially  users of older systems may find the possibility of very large memory usage annoy‐
       ing.  To prevent uncomfortable surprises, xz has a built-in memory usage  limiter,  which  is
       disabled  by default.  While some operating systems provide ways to limit the memory usage of
       processes, relying on it wasn't deemed to be flexible enough (for example, using ulimit(1) to
       limit virtual memory tends to cripple mmap(2)).

       The memory usage limiter can be enabled with the command line option --memlimit=limit.  Often
       it is more convenient to enable the limiter by default by setting  the  environment  variable
       XZ_DEFAULTS,  for  example,  XZ_DEFAULTS=--memlimit=150MiB.  It is possible to set the limits
       separately for compression and decompression by using  --memlimit-compress=limit  and  --mem‐‐
       limit-decompress=limit.  Using these two options outside XZ_DEFAULTS is rarely useful because
       a single run of xz cannot do both compression and decompression and --memlimit=limit  (or  -M
       limit) is shorter to type on the command line.

       If  the specified memory usage limit is exceeded when decompressing, xz will display an error
       and decompressing the file will fail.  If the limit is exceeded when compressing, xz will try
       to  scale the settings down so that the limit is no longer exceeded (except when using --for‐‐
       mat=raw or --no-adjust).  This way the operation won't fail unless the limit is  very  small.
       The  scaling of the settings is done in steps that don't match the compression level presets,
       for example, if the limit is only slightly less than the amount required for xz -9, the  set‐
       tings will be scaled down only a little, not all the way down to xz -8.

   Concatenation and padding with .xz files
       It is possible to concatenate .xz files as is.  xz will decompress such files as if they were
       a single .xz file.

       It is possible to insert padding between the concatenated parts or after the last part.   The
       padding  must  consist  of  null bytes and the size of the padding must be a multiple of four
       bytes.  This can be useful, for example, if the .xz file is stored on a medium that  measures
       file sizes in 512-byte blocks.

       Concatenation and padding are not allowed with .lzma files or raw streams.

OPTIONS
   Integer suffixes and special values
       In most places where an integer argument is expected, an optional suffix is supported to eas‐
       ily indicate large integers.  There must be no space between the integer and the suffix.

       KiB    Multiply the integer by 1,024 (2^10).  Ki, k, kB, K, and KB are accepted  as  synonyms
              for KiB.

       MiB    Multiply  the  integer by 1,048,576 (2^20).  Mi, m, M, and MB are accepted as synonyms
              for MiB.

       GiB    Multiply the integer by 1,073,741,824 (2^30).  Gi, g, G, and GB are accepted  as  syn‐
              onyms for GiB.

       The  special value max can be used to indicate the maximum integer value supported by the op‐
       tion.

   Operation mode
       If multiple operation mode options are given, the last one takes effect.

       -z, --compress
              Compress.  This is the default operation mode when no operation mode option is  speci‐
              fied  and  no other operation mode is implied from the command name (for example, unxz
              implies --decompress).

       -d, --decompress, --uncompress
              Decompress.

       -t, --test
              Test the integrity of compressed files.  This option  is  equivalent  to  --decompress
              --stdout  except  that  the decompressed data is discarded instead of being written to
              standard output.  No files are created or removed.

       -l, --list
              Print information about compressed files.  No uncompressed output is produced, and  no
              files  are  created  or removed.  In list mode, the program cannot read the compressed
              data from standard input or from other unseekable sources.

              The default listing shows basic information about files, one file per  line.   To  get
              more  detailed information, use also the --verbose option.  For even more information,
              use --verbose twice, but note that this may be slow, because getting all the extra in‐
              formation  requires many seeks.  The width of verbose output exceeds 80 characters, so
              piping the output to, for example, less -S may be convenient  if  the  terminal  isn't
              wide enough.

              The  exact  output  may  vary between xz versions and different locales.  For machine-
              readable output, --robot --list should be used.

   Operation modifiers
       -k, --keep
              Don't delete the input files.

              Since xz 5.4.0, this option also makes xz compress or decompress even if the input  is
              a  symbolic  link  to  a regular file, has more than one hard link, or has the setuid,
              setgid, or sticky bit set.  The setuid, setgid, and sticky bits are not copied to  the
              target file.  In earlier versions this was only done with --force.

       -f, --force
              This option has several effects:

              •  If the target file already exists, delete it before compressing or decompressing.

              •  Compress  or decompress even if the input is a symbolic link to a regular file, has
                 more than one hard link, or has the setuid, setgid, or sticky bit set.  The setuid,
                 setgid, and sticky bits are not copied to the target file.

              •  When used with --decompress --stdout and xz cannot recognize the type of the source
                 file, copy the source file as is to standard output.  This allows xzcat --force  to
                 be  used like cat(1) for files that have not been compressed with xz.  Note that in
                 future, xz might support new compressed file formats, which may make xz  decompress
                 more  types  of  files  instead  of  copying them as is to standard output.  --for‐‐
                 mat=format can be used to restrict xz to decompress only a single file format.

       -c, --stdout, --to-stdout
              Write the compressed or decompressed data to standard output instead of a file.   This
              implies --keep.

       --single-stream
              Decompress  only  the  first  .xz stream, and silently ignore possible remaining input
              data following the stream.  Normally such trailing garbage makes xz display an error.

              xz never decompresses more than one stream from .lzma files or raw streams,  but  this
              option  still  makes  xz ignore the possible trailing data after the .lzma file or raw
              stream.

              This option has no effect if the operation mode is not --decompress or --test.

       --no-sparse
              Disable creation of sparse files.  By default, if decompressing into a  regular  file,
              xz  tries  to make the file sparse if the decompressed data contains long sequences of
              binary zeros.  It also works when writing to standard output as long as standard  out‐
              put  is  connected to a regular file and certain additional conditions are met to make
              it safe.  Creating sparse files may save disk space and speed up the decompression  by
              reducing the amount of disk I/O.

       -S .suf, --suffix=.suf
              When  compressing, use .suf as the suffix for the target file instead of .xz or .lzma.
              If not writing to standard output and the source file already has the suffix  .suf,  a
              warning is displayed and the file is skipped.

              When decompressing, recognize files with the suffix .suf in addition to files with the
              .xz, .txz, .lzma, or .tlz suffix.  If the source file has the suffix .suf, the  suffix
              is removed to get the target filename.

              When  compressing  or decompressing raw streams (--format=raw), the suffix must always
              be specified unless writing to standard output, because there is no default suffix for
              raw streams.

       --files[=file]
              Read  the  filenames to process from file; if file is omitted, filenames are read from
              standard input.  Filenames must be terminated with the newline character.  A dash  (-)
              is  taken  as  a  regular  filename; it doesn't mean standard input.  If filenames are
              given also as command line arguments, they are processed  before  the  filenames  read
              from file.

       --files0[=file]
              This  is identical to --files[=file] except that each filename must be terminated with
              the null character.

   Basic file format and compression options
       -F format, --format=format
              Specify the file format to compress or decompress:

              auto   This is the default.  When compressing, auto is equivalent to xz.  When  decom‐
                     pressing,  the  format  of the input file is automatically detected.  Note that
                     raw streams (created with --format=raw) cannot be auto-detected.

              xz     Compress to the .xz file format, or accept only .xz files when decompressing.

              lzma, alone
                     Compress to the legacy .lzma file format, or accept only .lzma files  when  de‐
                     compressing.   The alternative name alone is provided for backwards compatibil‐
                     ity with LZMA Utils.

              raw    Compress or uncompress a raw stream (no headers).  This is meant  for  advanced
                     users  only.   To  decode raw streams, you need use --format=raw and explicitly
                     specify the filter chain, which normally would have been  stored  in  the  con‐
                     tainer headers.

       -C check, --check=check
              Specify  the  type  of  the  integrity check.  The check is calculated from the uncom‐
              pressed data and stored in the .xz file.  This option has an  effect  only  when  com‐
              pressing  into the .xz format; the .lzma format doesn't support integrity checks.  The
              integrity check (if any) is verified when the .xz file is decompressed.

              Supported check types:

              none   Don't calculate an integrity check at all.  This is usually a bad  idea.   This
                     can be useful when integrity of the data is verified by other means anyway.

              crc32  Calculate CRC32 using the polynomial from IEEE-802.3 (Ethernet).

              crc64  Calculate CRC64 using the polynomial from ECMA-182.  This is the default, since
                     it is slightly better than CRC32 at detecting damaged files and the speed  dif‐
                     ference is negligible.

              sha256 Calculate SHA-256.  This is somewhat slower than CRC32 and CRC64.

              Integrity  of  the  .xz  headers is always verified with CRC32.  It is not possible to
              change or disable it.

       --ignore-check
              Don't verify the integrity check of the compressed data when decompressing.  The CRC32
              values in the .xz headers will still be verified normally.

              Do  not  use  this option unless you know what you are doing.  Possible reasons to use
              this option:

              •  Trying to recover data from a corrupt .xz file.

              •  Speeding up decompression.  This matters mostly with SHA-256  or  with  files  that
                 have  compressed  extremely well.  It's recommended to not use this option for this
                 purpose unless the file integrity is verified externally in some other way.

       -0 ... -9
              Select a compression preset level.  The default is -6.  If multiple preset levels  are
              specified, the last one takes effect.  If a custom filter chain was already specified,
              setting a compression preset level clears the custom filter chain.

              The differences between the  presets  are  more  significant  than  with  gzip(1)  and
              bzip2(1).   The selected compression settings determine the memory requirements of the
              decompressor, thus using a too high preset level might make it painful  to  decompress
              the  file  on  an  old  system with little RAM.  Specifically, it's not a good idea to
              blindly use -9 for everything like it often is with gzip(1) and bzip2(1).

              -0 ... -3
                     These are somewhat fast presets.  -0 is sometimes faster  than  gzip  -9  while
                     compressing  much  better.   The  higher  ones  often  have speed comparable to
                     bzip2(1) with comparable or better compression ratio, although the results  de‐
                     pend a lot on the type of data being compressed.

              -4 ... -6
                     Good  to  very good compression while keeping decompressor memory usage reason‐
                     able even for old systems.  -6 is the default, which is usually a  good  choice
                     for distributing files that need to be decompressible even on systems with only
                     16 MiB RAM.  (-5e or -6e may be worth considering too.  See --extreme.)

              -7 ... -9
                     These are like -6 but with higher compressor and decompressor  memory  require‐
                     ments.  These are useful only when compressing files bigger than 8 MiB, 16 MiB,
                     and 32 MiB, respectively.

              On the same hardware, the decompression speed is approximately a  constant  number  of
              bytes  of compressed data per second.  In other words, the better the compression, the
              faster the decompression will usually be.  This also means that the amount  of  uncom‐
              pressed output produced per second can vary a lot.

              The following table summarises the features of the presets:

                     Preset   DictSize   CompCPU   CompMem   DecMem
                       -0     256 KiB       0        3 MiB    1 MiB
                       -1       1 MiB       1        9 MiB    2 MiB
                       -2       2 MiB       2       17 MiB    3 MiB
                       -3       4 MiB       3       32 MiB    5 MiB
                       -4       4 MiB       4       48 MiB    5 MiB
                       -5       8 MiB       5       94 MiB    9 MiB
                       -6       8 MiB       6       94 MiB    9 MiB
                       -7      16 MiB       6      186 MiB   17 MiB
                       -8      32 MiB       6      370 MiB   33 MiB
                       -9      64 MiB       6      674 MiB   65 MiB

              Column descriptions:

              •  DictSize  is  the LZMA2 dictionary size.  It is waste of memory to use a dictionary
                 bigger than the size of the uncompressed file.  This is why it is good to avoid us‐
                 ing the presets -7 ... -9 when there's no real need for them.  At -6 and lower, the
                 amount of memory wasted is usually low enough to not matter.

              •  CompCPU is a simplified representation of the LZMA2 settings that  affect  compres‐
                 sion  speed.   The  dictionary size affects speed too, so while CompCPU is the same
                 for levels -6 ... -9, higher levels still tend to be a little slower.  To get  even
                 slower and thus possibly better compression, see --extreme.

              •  CompMem  contains  the  compressor memory requirements in the single-threaded mode.
                 It may vary slightly between xz versions.  Memory requirements of some of  the  fu‐
                 ture  multithreaded  modes  may  be  dramatically  higher  than that of the single-
                 threaded mode.

              •  DecMem contains the decompressor memory requirements.   That  is,  the  compression
                 settings  determine  the memory requirements of the decompressor.  The exact decom‐
                 pressor memory usage is slightly more than the LZMA2 dictionary size, but the  val‐
                 ues in the table have been rounded up to the next full MiB.

       -e, --extreme
              Use a slower variant of the selected compression preset level (-0 ... -9) to hopefully
              get a little bit better compression ratio, but with bad luck this  can  also  make  it
              worse.   Decompressor  memory  usage  is not affected, but compressor memory usage in‐
              creases a little at preset levels -0 ... -3.

              Since there are two presets with dictionary sizes 4 MiB and 8 MiB, the presets -3e and
              -5e use slightly faster settings (lower CompCPU) than -4e and -6e, respectively.  That
              way no two presets are identical.

                     Preset   DictSize   CompCPU   CompMem   DecMem
                      -0e     256 KiB       8        4 MiB    1 MiB
                      -1e       1 MiB       8       13 MiB    2 MiB
                      -2e       2 MiB       8       25 MiB    3 MiB
                      -3e       4 MiB       7       48 MiB    5 MiB
                      -4e       4 MiB       8       48 MiB    5 MiB
                      -5e       8 MiB       7       94 MiB    9 MiB
                      -6e       8 MiB       8       94 MiB    9 MiB
                      -7e      16 MiB       8      186 MiB   17 MiB
                      -8e      32 MiB       8      370 MiB   33 MiB
                      -9e      64 MiB       8      674 MiB   65 MiB

              For example, there are a total of four presets that use 8 MiB dictionary, whose  order
              from the fastest to the slowest is -5, -6, -5e, and -6e.

       --fast
       --best These are somewhat misleading aliases for -0 and -9, respectively.  These are provided
              only for backwards compatibility with LZMA Utils.  Avoid using these options.

       --block-size=size
              When compressing to the .xz format, split the input data into blocks  of  size  bytes.
              The  blocks  are  compressed  independently  from  each other, which helps with multi-
              threading and makes limited random-access decompression possible.  This option is typ‐
              ically used to override the default block size in multi-threaded mode, but this option
              can be used in single-threaded mode too.

              In multi-threaded mode about three times size bytes will be allocated in  each  thread
              for  buffering input and output.  The default size is three times the LZMA2 dictionary
              size or 1 MiB, whichever is more.  Typically a good value is 2-4 times the size of the
              LZMA2 dictionary or at least 1 MiB.  Using size less than the LZMA2 dictionary size is
              waste of RAM because then the LZMA2 dictionary buffer will never get fully used.   The
              sizes of the blocks are stored in the block headers, which a future version of xz will
              use for multi-threaded decompression.

              In single-threaded mode no block splitting is done by default.   Setting  this  option
              doesn't  affect  memory  usage.   No size information is stored in block headers, thus
              files created in single-threaded mode won't be identical to files  created  in  multi-
              threaded  mode.   The  lack of size information also means that a future version of xz
              won't be able decompress the files in multi-threaded mode.

       --block-list=sizes
              When compressing to the .xz format, start a new block after the given intervals of un‐
              compressed data.

              The  uncompressed  sizes of the blocks are specified as a comma-separated list.  Omit‐
              ting a size (two or more consecutive commas) is a shorthand to use  the  size  of  the
              previous block.

              If the input file is bigger than the sum of sizes, the last value in sizes is repeated
              until the end of the file.  A special value of 0 may be used as the last value to  in‐
              dicate that the rest of the file should be encoded as a single block.

              If  one specifies sizes that exceed the encoder's block size (either the default value
              in threaded mode or the value specified with --block-size=size), the encoder will cre‐
              ate  additional  blocks while keeping the boundaries specified in sizes.  For example,
              if one specifies --block-size=10MiB --block-list=5MiB,10MiB,8MiB,12MiB,24MiB  and  the
              input  file is 80 MiB, one will get 11 blocks: 5, 10, 8, 10, 2, 10, 10, 4, 10, 10, and
              1 MiB.

              In multi-threaded mode the sizes of the blocks are stored in the block headers.   This
              isn't  done  in single-threaded mode, so the encoded output won't be identical to that
              of the multi-threaded mode.

       --flush-timeout=timeout
              When compressing, if more than timeout milliseconds (a positive  integer)  has  passed
              since  the  previous  flush  and reading more input would block, all the pending input
              data is flushed from the encoder and made available in the output stream.  This can be
              useful  if xz is used to compress data that is streamed over a network.  Small timeout
              values make the data available at the receiving end with  a  small  delay,  but  large
              timeout values give better compression ratio.

              This  feature is disabled by default.  If this option is specified more than once, the
              last one takes effect.  The special timeout value of 0 can be used to explicitly  dis‐
              able this feature.

              This feature is not available on non-POSIX systems.

              This  feature is still experimental.  Currently xz is unsuitable for decompressing the
              stream in real time due to how xz does buffering.

       --memlimit-compress=limit
              Set a memory usage limit for compression.  If this option is specified multiple times,
              the last one takes effect.

              If the compression settings exceed the limit, xz will adjust the settings downwards so
              that the limit is no longer exceeded and display a notice  that  automatic  adjustment
              was  done.   Such  adjustments  are  not made when compressing with --format=raw or if
              --no-adjust has been specified.  In those cases, an error is  displayed  and  xz  will
              exit with exit status 1.

              The limit can be specified in multiple ways:

              •  The  limit can be an absolute value in bytes.  Using an integer suffix like MiB can
                 be useful.  Example: --memlimit-compress=80MiB

              •  The limit can be specified as a percentage of total physical  memory  (RAM).   This
                 can  be  useful  especially  when setting the XZ_DEFAULTS environment variable in a
                 shell initialization script that is shared between different computers.   That  way
                 the  limit  is  automatically  bigger on systems with more memory.  Example: --mem‐‐
                 limit-compress=70%

              •  The limit can be reset back to its default value by setting it to 0.  This is  cur‐
                 rently equivalent to setting the limit to max (no memory usage limit).  Once multi‐
                 threading support has been implemented, there may be a difference between 0 and max
                 for  the multithreaded case, so it is recommended to use 0 instead of max until the
                 details have been decided.

              For 32-bit xz there is a special case: if the limit would be over 4020 MiB, the  limit
              is set to 4020 MiB.  (The values 0 and max aren't affected by this.  A similar feature
              doesn't exist for decompression.)  This can be helpful when a  32-bit  executable  has
              access to 4 GiB address space while hopefully doing no harm in other situations.

              See also the section Memory usage.

       --memlimit-decompress=limit
              Set  a  memory  usage limit for decompression.  This also affects the --list mode.  If
              the operation is not possible without exceeding the limit, xz will  display  an  error
              and decompressing the file will fail.  See --memlimit-compress=limit for possible ways
              to specify the limit.

       -M limit, --memlimit=limit, --memory=limit
              This  is  equivalent   to   specifying   --memlimit-compress=limit   --memlimit-decom‐‐
              press=limit.

       --no-adjust
              Display  an  error and exit if the compression settings exceed the memory usage limit.
              The default is to adjust the settings downwards so that the memory usage limit is  not
              exceeded.   Automatic  adjusting  is always disabled when creating raw streams (--for‐‐
              mat=raw).

       -T threads, --threads=threads
              Specify the number of worker threads to use.  Setting threads to  a  special  value  0
              makes  xz use as many threads as there are CPU cores on the system.  The actual number
              of threads can be less than threads if the input file is not big enough for  threading
              with the given settings or if using more threads would exceed the memory usage limit.

              Currently  the  only  threading  method is to split the input into blocks and compress
              them independently from each other.  The default block size depends on the compression
              level and can be overridden with the --block-size=size option.

              Threaded  decompression  hasn't been implemented yet.  It will only work on files that
              contain multiple blocks with size information in block headers.  All files  compressed
              in  multi-threaded  mode  meet this condition, but files compressed in single-threaded
              mode don't even if --block-size=size is used.

   Custom compressor filter chains
       A custom filter chain allows specifying the compression settings in detail instead of relying
       on  the  settings associated to the presets.  When a custom filter chain is specified, preset
       options (-0 ... -9 and --extreme) earlier on the command line are forgotten.  If a preset op‐
       tion  is specified after one or more custom filter chain options, the new preset takes effect
       and the custom filter chain options specified earlier are forgotten.

       A filter chain is comparable to piping on the command line.   When  compressing,  the  uncom‐
       pressed  input  goes to the first filter, whose output goes to the next filter (if any).  The
       output of the last filter gets written to the compressed file.  The maximum number of filters
       in the chain is four, but typically a filter chain has only one or two filters.

       Many filters have limitations on where they can be in the filter chain: some filters can work
       only as the last filter in the chain, some only as a non-last filter, and some  work  in  any
       position  in  the  chain.  Depending on the filter, this limitation is either inherent to the
       filter design or exists to prevent security issues.

       A custom filter chain is specified by using one or more filter options in the order they  are
       wanted  in  the filter chain.  That is, the order of filter options is significant!  When de‐
       coding raw streams (--format=raw), the filter chain is specified in the same order as it  was
       specified when compressing.

       Filters  take filter-specific options as a comma-separated list.  Extra commas in options are
       ignored.  Every option has a default value, so you need to specify only  those  you  want  to
       change.

       To  see  the whole filter chain and options, use xz -vv (that is, use --verbose twice).  This
       works also for viewing the filter chain options used by presets.

       --lzma1[=options]
       --lzma2[=options]
              Add LZMA1 or LZMA2 filter to the filter chain.  These filters can be used only as  the
              last filter in the chain.

              LZMA1  is  a  legacy  filter, which is supported almost solely due to the legacy .lzma
              file format, which supports only LZMA1.  LZMA2 is an updated version of LZMA1  to  fix
              some  practical  issues of LZMA1.  The .xz format uses LZMA2 and doesn't support LZMA1
              at all.  Compression speed and ratios of LZMA1 and LZMA2 are practically the same.

              LZMA1 and LZMA2 share the same set of options:

              preset=preset
                     Reset all LZMA1 or LZMA2 options to preset.   Preset  consist  of  an  integer,
                     which  may  be  followed by single-letter preset modifiers.  The integer can be
                     from 0 to 9, matching the command line options -0 ... -9.  The  only  supported
                     modifier  is  currently e, which matches --extreme.  If no preset is specified,
                     the default values of LZMA1 or LZMA2 options are taken from the preset 6.

              dict=size
                     Dictionary (history buffer) size indicates how many bytes of the recently  pro‐
                     cessed  uncompressed  data  is kept in memory.  The algorithm tries to find re‐
                     peating byte sequences (matches) in the uncompressed  data,  and  replace  them
                     with  references  to the data currently in the dictionary.  The bigger the dic‐
                     tionary, the higher is the chance to find a match.  Thus, increasing dictionary
                     size  usually  improves compression ratio, but a dictionary bigger than the un‐
                     compressed file is waste of memory.

                     Typical dictionary size is from 64 KiB to 64 MiB.  The minimum is  4 KiB.   The
                     maximum  for compression is currently 1.5 GiB (1536 MiB).  The decompressor al‐
                     ready supports dictionaries up to one byte less than 4 GiB, which is the  maxi‐
                     mum for the LZMA1 and LZMA2 stream formats.

                     Dictionary  size  and  match finder (mf) together determine the memory usage of
                     the LZMA1 or LZMA2 encoder.  The same (or bigger) dictionary size  is  required
                     for  decompressing that was used when compressing, thus the memory usage of the
                     decoder is determined by the dictionary size used when  compressing.   The  .xz
                     headers  store  the  dictionary  size  either as 2^n or 2^n + 2^(n-1), so these
                     sizes are somewhat preferred for compression.  Other sizes will get rounded  up
                     when stored in the .xz headers.

              lc=lc  Specify  the  number of literal context bits.  The minimum is 0 and the maximum
                     is 4; the default is 3.  In addition, the sum of lc and lp must not exceed 4.

                     All bytes that cannot be encoded as matches are encoded as literals.  That  is,
                     literals are simply 8-bit bytes that are encoded one at a time.

                     The literal coding makes an assumption that the highest lc bits of the previous
                     uncompressed byte correlate with the next byte.  For example, in  typical  Eng‐
                     lish text, an upper-case letter is often followed by a lower-case letter, and a
                     lower-case letter is usually followed by another lower-case letter.  In the US-
                     ASCII  character set, the highest three bits are 010 for upper-case letters and
                     011 for lower-case letters.  When lc is at least 3, the literal coding can take
                     advantage of this property in the uncompressed data.

                     The  default  value (3) is usually good.  If you want maximum compression, test
                     lc=4.  Sometimes it helps a little, and sometimes it makes  compression  worse.
                     If it makes it worse, test lc=2 too.

              lp=lp  Specify  the number of literal position bits.  The minimum is 0 and the maximum
                     is 4; the default is 0.

                     Lp affects what kind of alignment in the uncompressed data is assumed when  en‐
                     coding literals.  See pb below for more information about alignment.

              pb=pb  Specify  the  number  of position bits.  The minimum is 0 and the maximum is 4;
                     the default is 2.

                     Pb affects what kind of alignment in the uncompressed data is assumed  in  gen‐
                     eral.   The  default  means  four-byte alignment (2^pb=2^2=4), which is often a
                     good choice when there's no better guess.

                     When the aligment is known, setting pb accordingly may reduce the file  size  a
                     little.   For  example,  with  text  files having one-byte alignment (US-ASCII,
                     ISO-8859-*, UTF-8), setting pb=0 can improve compression slightly.  For  UTF-16
                     text,  pb=1  is a good choice.  If the alignment is an odd number like 3 bytes,
                     pb=0 might be the best choice.

                     Even though the assumed alignment can be adjusted with pb  and  lp,  LZMA1  and
                     LZMA2  still  slightly  favor 16-byte alignment.  It might be worth taking into
                     account when designing file formats that are likely to be often compressed with
                     LZMA1 or LZMA2.

              mf=mf  Match finder has a major effect on encoder speed, memory usage, and compression
                     ratio.  Usually Hash Chain match finders are  faster  than  Binary  Tree  match
                     finders.   The  default depends on the preset: 0 uses hc3, 1-3 use hc4, and the
                     rest use bt4.

                     The following match finders are supported.  The memory usage formulas below are
                     rough  approximations, which are closest to the reality when dict is a power of
                     two.

                     hc3    Hash Chain with 2- and 3-byte hashing
                            Minimum value for nice: 3
                            Memory usage:
                            dict * 7.5 (if dict <= 16 MiB);
                            dict * 5.5 + 64 MiB (if dict > 16 MiB)

                     hc4    Hash Chain with 2-, 3-, and 4-byte hashing
                            Minimum value for nice: 4
                            Memory usage:
                            dict * 7.5 (if dict <= 32 MiB);
                            dict * 6.5 (if dict > 32 MiB)

                     bt2    Binary Tree with 2-byte hashing
                            Minimum value for nice: 2
                            Memory usage: dict * 9.5

                     bt3    Binary Tree with 2- and 3-byte hashing
                            Minimum value for nice: 3
                            Memory usage:
                            dict * 11.5 (if dict <= 16 MiB);
                            dict * 9.5 + 64 MiB (if dict > 16 MiB)

                     bt4    Binary Tree with 2-, 3-, and 4-byte hashing
                            Minimum value for nice: 4
                            Memory usage:
                            dict * 11.5 (if dict <= 32 MiB);
                            dict * 10.5 (if dict > 32 MiB)

              mode=mode
                     Compression mode specifies the method to analyze the data produced by the match
                     finder.   Supported modes are fast and normal.  The default is fast for presets
                     0-3 and normal for presets 4-9.

                     Usually fast is used with Hash Chain match finders and normal with Binary  Tree
                     match finders.  This is also what the presets do.

              nice=nice
                     Specify what is considered to be a nice length for a match.  Once a match of at
                     least nice bytes is found, the algorithm  stops  looking  for  possibly  better
                     matches.

                     Nice  can  be 2-273 bytes.  Higher values tend to give better compression ratio
                     at the expense of speed.  The default depends on the preset.

              depth=depth
                     Specify the maximum search depth in the match finder.  The default is the  spe‐
                     cial  value  of 0, which makes the compressor determine a reasonable depth from
                     mf and nice.

                     Reasonable depth for Hash Chains is 4-100 and 16-1000 for Binary Trees.   Using
                     very high values for depth can make the encoder extremely slow with some files.
                     Avoid setting the depth over 1000 unless you are prepared to interrupt the com‐
                     pression in case it is taking far too long.

              When decoding raw streams (--format=raw), LZMA2 needs only the dictionary size.  LZMA1
              needs also lc, lp, and pb.

       --x86[=options]
       --powerpc[=options]
       --ia64[=options]
       --arm[=options]
       --armthumb[=options]
       --sparc[=options]
              Add a branch/call/jump (BCJ) filter to the filter chain.  These filters  can  be  used
              only as a non-last filter in the filter chain.

              A  BCJ  filter converts relative addresses in the machine code to their absolute coun‐
              terparts.  This doesn't change the size of the  data,  but  it  increases  redundancy,
              which  can  help LZMA2 to produce 0-15 % smaller .xz file.  The BCJ filters are always
              reversible, so using a BCJ filter for wrong type of data doesn't cause any data  loss,
              although it may make the compression ratio slightly worse.

              It  is  fine  to apply a BCJ filter on a whole executable; there's no need to apply it
              only on the executable section.  Applying a BCJ filter on  an  archive  that  contains
              both  executable and non-executable files may or may not give good results, so it gen‐
              erally isn't good to blindly apply a BCJ filter when compressing binary  packages  for
              distribution.

              These BCJ filters are very fast and use insignificant amount of memory.  If a BCJ fil‐
              ter improves compression ratio of a file, it can improve decompression  speed  at  the
              same time.  This is because, on the same hardware, the decompression speed of LZMA2 is
              roughly a fixed number of bytes of compressed data per second.

              These BCJ filters have known problems related to the compression ratio:

              •  Some types of files containing executable code (for example, object  files,  static
                 libraries,  and Linux kernel modules) have the addresses in the instructions filled
                 with filler values.  These BCJ filters will still do the address conversion,  which
                 will make the compression worse with these files.

              •  Applying  a  BCJ  filter  on an archive containing multiple similar executables can
                 make the compression ratio worse than not using a BCJ filter.  This is because  the
                 BCJ filter doesn't detect the boundaries of the executable files, and doesn't reset
                 the address conversion counter for each executable.

              Both of the above problems will be fixed in the future in a new filter.  The  old  BCJ
              filters  will still be useful in embedded systems, because the decoder of the new fil‐
              ter will be bigger and use more memory.

              Different instruction sets have different alignment:

                     Filter      Alignment   Notes
                     x86             1       32-bit or 64-bit x86
                     PowerPC         4       Big endian only
                     ARM             4       Little endian only
                     ARM-Thumb       2       Little endian only
                     IA-64          16       Big or little endian
                     SPARC           4       Big or little endian

              Since the BCJ-filtered data is usually compressed with LZMA2,  the  compression  ratio
              may  be  improved  slightly if the LZMA2 options are set to match the alignment of the
              selected BCJ filter.  For example, with the IA-64 filter, it's good to set  pb=4  with
              LZMA2 (2^4=16).  The x86 filter is an exception; it's usually good to stick to LZMA2's
              default four-byte alignment when compressing x86 executables.

              All BCJ filters support the same options:

              start=offset
                     Specify the start offset that is used when converting between relative and  ab‐
                     solute addresses.  The offset must be a multiple of the alignment of the filter
                     (see the table above).  The default is zero.  In practice, the default is good;
                     specifying a custom offset is almost never useful.

       --delta[=options]
              Add the Delta filter to the filter chain.  The Delta filter can be only used as a non-
              last filter in the filter chain.

              Currently only simple byte-wise delta calculation is supported.  It can be useful when
              compressing,  for example, uncompressed bitmap images or uncompressed PCM audio.  How‐
              ever, special purpose algorithms may give significantly better results  than  Delta  +
              LZMA2.   This  is  true especially with audio, which compresses faster and better, for
              example, with flac(1).

              Supported options:

              dist=distance
                     Specify the distance of the delta  calculation  in  bytes.   distance  must  be
                     1-256.  The default is 1.

                     For example, with dist=2 and eight-byte input A1 B1 A2 B3 A3 B5 A4 B7, the out‐
                     put will be A1 B1 01 02 01 02 01 02.

   Other options
       -q, --quiet
              Suppress warnings and notices.  Specify this twice to suppress errors too.   This  op‐
              tion has no effect on the exit status.  That is, even if a warning was suppressed, the
              exit status to indicate a warning is still used.

       -v, --verbose
              Be verbose.  If standard error is connected to a terminal, xz will display a  progress
              indicator.  Specifying --verbose twice will give even more verbose output.

              The progress indicator shows the following information:

              •  Completion  percentage  is  shown if the size of the input file is known.  That is,
                 the percentage cannot be shown in pipes.

              •  Amount of compressed data produced (compressing) or consumed (decompressing).

              •  Amount of uncompressed data consumed (compressing) or produced (decompressing).

              •  Compression ratio, which is calculated by dividing the amount  of  compressed  data
                 processed so far by the amount of uncompressed data processed so far.

              •  Compression or decompression speed.  This is measured as the amount of uncompressed
                 data consumed (compression) or produced (decompression) per second.   It  is  shown
                 after a few seconds have passed since xz started processing the file.

              •  Elapsed time in the format M:SS or H:MM:SS.

              •  Estimated remaining time is shown only when the size of the input file is known and
                 a couple of seconds have already passed since xz started processing the file.   The
                 time  is  shown in a less precise format which never has any colons, for example, 2
                 min 30 s.

              When standard error is not a terminal, --verbose will make xz print the filename, com‐
              pressed  size,  uncompressed  size, compression ratio, and possibly also the speed and
              elapsed time on a single line to standard error after compressing or decompressing the
              file.  The speed and elapsed time are included only when the operation took at least a
              few seconds.  If the operation didn't finish, for example, due to  user  interruption,
              also the completion percentage is printed if the size of the input file is known.

       -Q, --no-warn
              Don't set the exit status to 2 even if a condition worth a warning was detected.  This
              option doesn't affect the verbosity level, thus both --quiet and --no-warn have to  be
              used to not display warnings and to not alter the exit status.

       --robot
              Print  messages in a machine-parsable format.  This is intended to ease writing front‐
              ends that want to use xz instead of liblzma,  which  may  be  the  case  with  various
              scripts.   The  output  with  this  option enabled is meant to be stable across xz re‐
              leases.  See the section ROBOT MODE for details.

       --info-memory
              Display, in human-readable format, how much physical memory (RAM) xz thinks the system
              has  and  the memory usage limits for compression and decompression, and exit success‐
              fully.

       -h, --help
              Display a help message describing the most commonly used options,  and  exit  success‐
              fully.

       -H, --long-help
              Display a help message describing all features of xz, and exit successfully

       -V, --version
              Display  the  version  number  of xz and liblzma in human readable format.  To get ma‐
              chine-parsable output, specify --robot before --version.

ROBOT MODE
       The robot mode is activated with the --robot option.  It makes the output  of  xz  easier  to
       parse  by  other  programs.   Currently  --robot  is  supported only together with --version,
       --info-memory, and --list.  It will be supported for compression and decompression in the fu‐
       ture.

   Version
       xz --robot --version will print the version number of xz and liblzma in the following format:

       XZ_VERSION=XYYYZZZS
       LIBLZMA_VERSION=XYYYZZZS

       X      Major version.

       YYY    Minor version.  Even numbers are stable.  Odd numbers are alpha or beta versions.

       ZZZ    Patch level for stable releases or just a counter for development releases.

       S      Stability.   0 is alpha, 1 is beta, and 2 is stable.  S should be always 2 when YYY is
              even.

       XYYYZZZS are the same on both lines if xz and liblzma are from the same XZ Utils release.

       Examples: 4.999.9beta is 49990091 and 5.0.0 is 50000002.

   Memory limit information
       xz --robot --info-memory prints a single line with three tab-separated columns:

       1.  Total amount of physical memory (RAM) in bytes

       2.  Memory usage limit for compression in bytes.  A special value of zero indicates  the  de‐
           fault setting, which for single-threaded mode is the same as no limit.

       3.  Memory usage limit for decompression in bytes.  A special value of zero indicates the de‐
           fault setting, which for single-threaded mode is the same as no limit.

       In the future, the output of xz --robot --info-memory may have more columns, but  never  more
       than a single line.

   List mode
       xz  --robot  --list  uses  tab-separated output.  The first column of every line has a string
       that indicates the type of the information found on that line:

       name   This is always the first line when starting to list a file.  The second column on  the
              line is the filename.

       file   This  line  contains  overall  information  about  the  .xz file.  This line is always
              printed after the name line.

       stream This line type is used only when --verbose was specified.  There are  as  many  stream
              lines as there are streams in the .xz file.

       block  This  line  type  is  used only when --verbose was specified.  There are as many block
              lines as there are blocks in the .xz file.  The block lines are shown  after  all  the
              stream lines; different line types are not interleaved.

       summary
              This  line type is used only when --verbose was specified twice.  This line is printed
              after all block lines.  Like the file line, the summary line contains overall informa‐
              tion about the .xz file.

       totals This  line is always the very last line of the list output.  It shows the total counts
              and sizes.

       The columns of the file lines:
              2.  Number of streams in the file
              3.  Total number of blocks in the stream(s)
              4.  Compressed size of the file
              5.  Uncompressed size of the file
              6.  Compression ratio, for example, 0.123.  If ratio is over 9.999, three dashes (---)
                  are displayed instead of the ratio.
              7.  Comma-separated list of integrity check names.  The following strings are used for
                  the known check types: None, CRC32, CRC64, and SHA-256.  For unknown check  types,
                  Unknown-N  is  used,  where N is the Check ID as a decimal number (one or two dig‐
                  its).
              8.  Total size of stream padding in the file

       The columns of the stream lines:
              2.  Stream number (the first stream is 1)
              3.  Number of blocks in the stream
              4.  Compressed start offset
              5.  Uncompressed start offset
              6.  Compressed size (does not include stream padding)
              7.  Uncompressed size
              8.  Compression ratio
              9.  Name of the integrity check
              10. Size of stream padding

       The columns of the block lines:
              2.  Number of the stream containing this block
              3.  Block number relative to the beginning of the stream (the first block is 1)
              4.  Block number relative to the beginning of the file
              5.  Compressed start offset relative to the beginning of the file
              6.  Uncompressed start offset relative to the beginning of the file
              7.  Total compressed size of the block (includes headers)
              8.  Uncompressed size
              9.  Compression ratio
              10. Name of the integrity check

       If --verbose was specified twice, additional columns are included on the block lines.   These
       are  not  displayed  with  a single --verbose, because getting this information requires many
       seeks and can thus be slow:
              11. Value of the integrity check in hexadecimal
              12. Block header size
              13. Block flags: c indicates that compressed size is present, and u indicates that un‐
                  compressed  size  is present.  If the flag is not set, a dash (-) is shown instead
                  to keep the string length fixed.  New flags may be added to the end of the  string
                  in the future.
              14. Size  of  the actual compressed data in the block (this excludes the block header,
                  block padding, and check fields)
              15. Amount of memory (in bytes) required to decompress this block with this xz version
              16. Filter chain.  Note that most of the options used at compression  time  cannot  be
                  known,  because  only  the options that are needed for decompression are stored in
                  the .xz headers.

       The columns of the summary lines:
              2.  Amount of memory (in bytes) required to decompress this file with this xz version
              3.  yes or no indicating if all block headers have both  compressed  size  and  uncom‐
                  pressed size stored in them
              Since xz 5.1.2alpha:
              4.  Minimum xz version required to decompress the file

       The columns of the totals line:
              2.  Number of streams
              3.  Number of blocks
              4.  Compressed size
              5.  Uncompressed size
              6.  Average compression ratio
              7.  Comma-separated list of integrity check names that were present in the files
              8.  Stream padding size
              9.  Number  of  files.  This is here to keep the order of the earlier columns the same
                  as on file lines.

       If --verbose was specified twice, additional columns are included on the totals line:
              10. Maximum amount of memory (in bytes) required to decompress the files with this  xz
                  version
              11. yes  or  no  indicating  if all block headers have both compressed size and uncom‐
                  pressed size stored in them
              Since xz 5.1.2alpha:
              12. Minimum xz version required to decompress the file

       Future versions may add new line types and new columns can be  added  to  the  existing  line
       types, but the existing columns won't be changed.

EXIT STATUS
       0      All is good.

       1      An error occurred.

       2      Something worth a warning occurred, but no actual errors occurred.

       Notices (not warnings or errors) printed on standard error don't affect the exit status.

ENVIRONMENT
       xz  parses  space-separated  lists  of options from the environment variables XZ_DEFAULTS and
       XZ_OPT, in this order, before parsing the options from the command line.  Note that only  op‐
       tions are parsed from the environment variables; all non-options are silently ignored.  Pars‐
       ing is done with getopt_long(3) which is used also for the command line arguments.

       XZ_DEFAULTS
              User-specific or system-wide default options.  Typically this is set in a  shell  ini‐
              tialization  script  to  enable xz's memory usage limiter by default.  Excluding shell
              initialization scripts and similar special cases, scripts  must  never  set  or  unset
              XZ_DEFAULTS.

       XZ_OPT This  is for passing options to xz when it is not possible to set the options directly
              on the xz command line.  This is the case when xz is run by a script or tool, for  ex‐
              ample, GNU tar(1):

                     XZ_OPT=-2v tar caf foo.tar.xz foo

              Scripts  may  use  XZ_OPT, for example, to set script-specific default compression op‐
              tions.  It is still recommended to allow users to override XZ_OPT if that  is  reason‐
              able.  For example, in sh(1) scripts one may use something like this:

                     XZ_OPT=${XZ_OPT-"-7e"}
                     export XZ_OPT

LZMA UTILS COMPATIBILITY
       The  command  line syntax of xz is practically a superset of lzma, unlzma, and lzcat as found
       from LZMA Utils 4.32.x.  In most cases, it is possible to replace LZMA Utils  with  XZ  Utils
       without  breaking existing scripts.  There are some incompatibilities though, which may some‐
       times cause problems.

   Compression preset levels
       The numbering of the compression level presets is not identical in xz and  LZMA  Utils.   The
       most  important  difference is how dictionary sizes are mapped to different presets.  Dictio‐
       nary size is roughly equal to the decompressor memory usage.

              Level     xz      LZMA Utils
               -0     256 KiB      N/A
               -1       1 MiB     64 KiB
               -2       2 MiB      1 MiB
               -3       4 MiB    512 KiB
               -4       4 MiB      1 MiB
               -5       8 MiB      2 MiB
               -6       8 MiB      4 MiB
               -7      16 MiB      8 MiB
               -8      32 MiB     16 MiB
               -9      64 MiB     32 MiB

       The dictionary size differences affect the compressor memory usage too, but  there  are  some
       other differences between LZMA Utils and XZ Utils, which make the difference even bigger:

              Level     xz      LZMA Utils 4.32.x
               -0       3 MiB          N/A
               -1       9 MiB          2 MiB
               -2      17 MiB         12 MiB
               -3      32 MiB         12 MiB
               -4      48 MiB         16 MiB
               -5      94 MiB         26 MiB
               -6      94 MiB         45 MiB
               -7     186 MiB         83 MiB
               -8     370 MiB        159 MiB
               -9     674 MiB        311 MiB

       The default preset level in LZMA Utils is -7 while in XZ Utils it is -6, so both use an 8 MiB
       dictionary by default.

   Streamed vs. non-streamed .lzma files
       The uncompressed size of the file can be stored in the .lzma header.  LZMA  Utils  does  that
       when compressing regular files.  The alternative is to mark that uncompressed size is unknown
       and use end-of-payload marker to indicate where the decompressor  should  stop.   LZMA  Utils
       uses  this  method  when  uncompressed  size  isn't known, which is the case, for example, in
       pipes.

       xz supports decompressing .lzma files with or without end-of-payload marker,  but  all  .lzma
       files  created  by xz will use end-of-payload marker and have uncompressed size marked as un‐
       known in the .lzma header.  This may be a problem in some uncommon situations.  For  example,
       a  .lzma decompressor in an embedded device might work only with files that have known uncom‐
       pressed size.  If you hit this problem, you need to use LZMA Utils  or  LZMA  SDK  to  create
       .lzma files with known uncompressed size.

   Unsupported .lzma files
       The  .lzma format allows lc values up to 8, and lp values up to 4.  LZMA Utils can decompress
       files with any lc and lp, but always creates files with lc=3 and lp=0.  Creating  files  with
       other lc and lp is possible with xz and with LZMA SDK.

       The implementation of the LZMA1 filter in liblzma requires that the sum of lc and lp must not
       exceed 4.  Thus, .lzma files, which exceed this limitation, cannot be decompressed with xz.

       LZMA Utils creates only .lzma files which have a dictionary size of 2^n (a power  of  2)  but
       accepts  files  with any dictionary size.  liblzma accepts only .lzma files which have a dic‐
       tionary size of 2^n or 2^n + 2^(n-1).  This is to decrease  false  positives  when  detecting
       .lzma files.

       These  limitations shouldn't be a problem in practice, since practically all .lzma files have
       been compressed with settings that liblzma will accept.

   Trailing garbage
       When decompressing, LZMA Utils silently ignore everything after the first .lzma  stream.   In
       most  situations, this is a bug.  This also means that LZMA Utils don't support decompressing
       concatenated .lzma files.

       If there is data left after the first .lzma stream, xz considers the file to be  corrupt  un‐
       less --single-stream was used.  This may break obscure scripts which have assumed that trail‐
       ing garbage is ignored.

NOTES
   Compressed output may vary
       The exact compressed output produced from the same uncompressed input file may  vary  between
       XZ Utils versions even if compression options are identical.  This is because the encoder can
       be improved (faster or better compression) without affecting the file format.  The output can
       vary  even  between different builds of the same XZ Utils version, if different build options
       are used.

       The above means that once --rsyncable has been implemented, the resulting files won't  neces‐
       sarily  be rsyncable unless both old and new files have been compressed with the same xz ver‐
       sion.  This problem can be fixed if a part of the encoder implementation is  frozen  to  keep
       rsyncable output stable across xz versions.

   Embedded .xz decompressors
       Embedded  .xz  decompressor  implementations like XZ Embedded don't necessarily support files
       created with integrity check  types  other  than  none  and  crc32.   Since  the  default  is
       --check=crc64,  you  must  use --check=none or --check=crc32 when creating files for embedded
       systems.

       Outside embedded systems, all .xz format decompressors support all the  check  types,  or  at
       least are able to decompress the file without verifying the integrity check if the particular
       check is not supported.

       XZ Embedded supports BCJ filters, but only with the default start offset.

EXAMPLES
   Basics
       Compress the file foo into foo.xz using the default compression level (-6), and remove foo if
       compression is successful:

              xz foo

       Decompress bar.xz into bar and don't remove bar.xz even if decompression is successful:

              xz -dk bar.xz

       Create  baz.tar.xz  with  the preset -4e (-4 --extreme), which is slower than the default -6,
       but needs less memory for compression and decompression (48 MiB and 5 MiB, respectively):

              tar cf - baz | xz -4e > baz.tar.xz

       A mix of compressed and uncompressed files can be decompressed to standard output with a sin‐
       gle command:

              xz -dcf a.txt b.txt.xz c.txt d.txt.lzma > abcd.txt

   Parallel compression of many files
       On GNU and *BSD, find(1) and xargs(1) can be used to parallelize compression of many files:

              find . -type f \! -name '*.xz' -print0 \
                  | xargs -0r -P4 -n16 xz -T1

       The  -P  option to xargs(1) sets the number of parallel xz processes.  The best value for the
       -n option depends on how many files there are to be compressed.  If there are only  a  couple
       of  files,  the value should probably be 1; with tens of thousands of files, 100 or even more
       may be appropriate to reduce the number of xz processes that xargs(1) will eventually create.

       The option -T1 for xz is there to force it to single-threaded mode, because xargs(1) is  used
       to control the amount of parallelization.

   Robot mode
       Calculate how many bytes have been saved in total after compressing multiple files:

              xz --robot --list *.xz | awk '/^totals/{print $5-$4}'

       A  script may want to know that it is using new enough xz.  The following sh(1) script checks
       that the version number of the xz tool is at least 5.0.0.  This method is compatible with old
       beta versions, which didn't support the --robot option:

              if ! eval "$(xz --robot --version 2> /dev/null)" ||
                      [ "$XZ_VERSION" -lt 50000002 ]; then
                  echo "Your xz is too old."
              fi
              unset XZ_VERSION LIBLZMA_VERSION

       Set a memory usage limit for decompression using XZ_OPT, but if a limit has already been set,
       don't increase it:

              NEWLIM=$((123 << 20))  # 123 MiB
              OLDLIM=$(xz --robot --info-memory | cut -f3)
              if [ $OLDLIM -eq 0 -o $OLDLIM -gt $NEWLIM ]; then
                  XZ_OPT="$XZ_OPT --memlimit-decompress=$NEWLIM"
                  export XZ_OPT
              fi

   Custom compressor filter chains
       The simplest use for custom filter chains is customizing a LZMA2 preset.  This can be useful,
       because the presets cover only a subset of the potentially useful combinations of compression
       settings.

       The CompCPU columns of the tables from the descriptions of the options -0 ...  -9  and  --ex‐‐
       treme  are useful when customizing LZMA2 presets.  Here are the relevant parts collected from
       those two tables:

              Preset   CompCPU
               -0         0
               -1         1
               -2         2
               -3         3
               -4         4
               -5         5
               -6         6
               -5e        7
               -6e        8

       If you know that a file requires somewhat big dictionary (for example,  32 MiB)  to  compress
       well,  but  you  want to compress it quicker than xz -8 would do, a preset with a low CompCPU
       value (for example, 1) can be modified to use a bigger dictionary:

              xz --lzma2=preset=1,dict=32MiB foo.tar

       With certain files, the above command may be faster than xz  -6  while  compressing  signifi‐
       cantly  better.   However, it must be emphasized that only some files benefit from a big dic‐
       tionary while keeping the CompCPU value low.  The most obvious situation, where a big dictio‐
       nary  can help a lot, is an archive containing very similar files of at least a few megabytes
       each.  The dictionary size has to be significantly bigger than any individual file  to  allow
       LZMA2 to take full advantage of the similarities between consecutive files.

       If  very high compressor and decompressor memory usage is fine, and the file being compressed
       is at least several hundred megabytes, it may be useful to use an even bigger dictionary than
       the 64 MiB that xz -9 would use:

              xz -vv --lzma2=dict=192MiB big_foo.tar

       Using -vv (--verbose --verbose) like in the above example can be useful to see the memory re‐
       quirements of the compressor and decompressor.  Remember that using a dictionary bigger  than
       the  size  of the uncompressed file is waste of memory, so the above command isn't useful for
       small files.

       Sometimes the compression time doesn't matter, but the decompressor memory usage  has  to  be
       kept low, for example, to make it possible to decompress the file on an embedded system.  The
       following command uses -6e (-6 --extreme) as a base and sets the dictionary to  only  64 KiB.
       The  resulting  file can be decompressed with XZ Embedded (that's why there is --check=crc32)
       using about 100 KiB of memory.

              xz --check=crc32 --lzma2=preset=6e,dict=64KiB foo

       If you want to squeeze out as many bytes as possible, adjusting the number of literal context
       bits  (lc) and number of position bits (pb) can sometimes help.  Adjusting the number of lit‐
       eral position bits (lp) might help too, but usually lc and pb are more important.  For  exam‐
       ple,  a  source  code  archive contains mostly US-ASCII text, so something like the following
       might give slightly (like 0.1 %) smaller file than xz -6e (try also without lc=4):

              xz --lzma2=preset=6e,pb=0,lc=4 source_code.tar

       Using another filter together with LZMA2 can improve compression  with  certain  file  types.
       For example, to compress a x86-32 or x86-64 shared library using the x86 BCJ filter:

              xz --x86 --lzma2 libfoo.so

       Note  that  the  order  of  the  filter  options is significant.  If --x86 is specified after
       --lzma2, xz will give an error, because there cannot be any filter after LZMA2, and also  be‐
       cause the x86 BCJ filter cannot be used as the last filter in the chain.

       The  Delta  filter  together  with LZMA2 can give good results with bitmap images.  It should
       usually beat PNG, which has a few more advanced filters than simple delta  but  uses  Deflate
       for the actual compression.

       The  image  has  to  be saved in uncompressed format, for example, as uncompressed TIFF.  The
       distance parameter of the Delta filter is set to match the number of bytes per pixel  in  the
       image.   For  example,  24-bit  RGB  bitmap needs dist=3, and it is also good to pass pb=0 to
       LZMA2 to accommodate the three-byte alignment:

              xz --delta=dist=3 --lzma2=pb=0 foo.tiff

       If multiple images have been put into a single archive (for example, .tar), the Delta  filter
       will work on that too as long as all images have the same number of bytes per pixel.

SEE ALSO
       xzdec(1), xzdiff(1), xzgrep(1), xzless(1), xzmore(1), gzip(1), bzip2(1), 7z(1)

       XZ Utils: <https://tukaani.org/xz/>
       XZ Embedded: <https://tukaani.org/xz/embedded.html>
       LZMA SDK: <http://7-zip.org/sdk.html>



Tukaani                                      2020-02-01                                        XZ(1)

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