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bzip2 compresses files using the Burrows-Wheeler
block-sorting text compression algorithm, and Huffman coding.
Compression is generally considerably better than that
achieved by more conventional LZ77/LZ78-based compressors,
and approaches the performance of the PPM family of statistical compressors.
bzip2 is built on top of libbzip2, a flexible library
for handling compressed data in the bzip2 format. This manual
describes both how to use the program and
how to work with the library interface. Most of the
manual is devoted to this library, not the program,
which is good news if your interest is only in the program.
Chapter 2 describes how to use bzip2; this is the only part
you need to read if you just want to know how to operate the program.
Chapter 3 describes the programming interfaces in detail, and
Chapter 4 records some miscellaneous notes which I thought
ought to be recorded somewhere.
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