bzip2 command in Linux/Unix

The bzip2 command in Linux is used for compressing and decompressing files.

• It is like gzip command but takes a little more time to compress but compresses better.
• It uses the Burrows-Wheeler block-sorting text compression algorithm and Huffman coding.
• bzip2 command creates a compressed file with the extension “.bz2”.

Syntax for bzip2 command

bzip2 [OPTIONS] filename

Uses of bzip2 command

Check bzip2 command is already installed or not. To check this just type bzip2 in the terminal.

bzip2

Installing bzip2 command

The bzip2 command can be installed using following command

• For Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt install bzip2

• For Contos/RHEL

sudo yum install  bzip2

• For Fedora

sudo dnf install bzip2

bzip2 Help

To get help for bzip2 command and find options available with bzip2 command, Use bzip2 --help command.

bzip2 --help

Version

TO check bzzip2 installed version, use command bzip2 --version

bzip2 --version

Convert file to bzip2 file

• For single file

bzip2 command can be used to convert single file or multiple file

bzip2 filename

bzip2 123.txt

• For Multiple file

bzip2 file1 file2 file3 ......

bzip2 abc.txt def.txt

• For files with same extension

bzip2 *.file_extension

bzip2 *.html

Convert to bzip2 file without deleting original file

bzip2 -k filename

bzip2 -k 456.txt

bzip2 -v filename

bzip2 -v 789.txt

Unzip bzip2 file

bzip2 -d zip_filename

bzip2 -d 123.txt.bz2

Check Validity of bzip2 file

bzip2 -t 456.txt.bz2

bzip2 -v -t 456.txt.bz2

bzip2 -t 677.bz2

bzip2 -f 456.txt

bzip2 -cd 123.txt.bz2

bzip2 -q -t 677.bz2