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XZ(1)                                                       XZ Utils                                                       XZ(1)



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

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

       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 argu-
       ments (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 also the legacy .lzma format and raw compressed streams with no container format headers
       are 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 derived from the source file
       name:

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

       o  When  decompressing,  the .xz or .lzma suffix is removed from the filename to get the target filename.  xz also recog-
          nizes 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:

       o  File is not a regular file. Symbolic links are not followed, thus they are not considered to be regular files.

       o  File has more than one hard link.

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

       o  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).

       o  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, permissions, access time, and modi-
       fication  time  from the source file to the target file. If copying the group fails, the permissions are modified so that
       the target file doesn't become accessible to users who didn't have permission to access the source file.  xz doesn't sup-
       port 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  lim-
       ited use since when standard error is a terminal, using --verbose will display an automatically updating progress indica-
       tor.

   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 affect also the memory usage of the decompressor. Typically the decompressor
       needs only 5 % to 20 % of the amount of RAM that the compressor needed when creating the file. Still, the worst-case mem-
       ory usage of the decompressor is several gigabytes.

       To  prevent uncomfortable surprises caused by huge memory usage, xz has a built-in memory usage limiter. While some oper-
       ating systems provide ways to limit the memory usage of processes, relying on it wasn't deemed to be flexible enough. The
       default limit depends on the total amount of physical RAM:

       o  If 40 % of RAM is at least 80 MiB, 40 % of RAM is used as the limit.

       o  If 80 % of RAM is over 80 MiB, 80 MiB is used as the limit.

       o  Otherwise 80 % of RAM is used as the limit.

       When  compressing,  if  the  selected  compression settings exceed the memory usage limit, the settings are automatically
       adjusted downwards and a notice about this is displayed. As an exception, if the memory usage limit is exceeded when com-
       pressing with --format=raw, an error is displayed and xz will exit with exit status 1.

       If  source  file  cannot  be decompressed without exceeding the memory usage limit, an error message is displayed and the
       file is skipped. Note that compressed files may contain many blocks, which may have been compressed with  different  set-
       tings.  Typically all blocks will have roughly the same memory requirements, but it is possible that a block later in the
       file will exceed the memory usage limit, and an error about too low memory usage limit gets displayed after some data has
       already been decompressed.

       The  absolute  value  of the active memory usage limit can be seen with --info-memory or near the bottom of the output of
       --long-help.  The default limit can be overridden with --memory=limit.

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

       KiB    The integer is multiplied by 1,024 (2^10). Also Ki, k, kB, K, and KB are accepted as synonyms for KiB.

       MiB    The integer is multiplied by 1,048,576 (2^20). Also Mi, m, M, and MB are accepted as synonyms for MiB.

       GiB    The integer is multiplied by 1,073,741,824 (2^30). Also Gi, g, G, and GB are accepted as synonyms for GiB.

       A special value max can be used to indicate the maximum integer value supported by the option.

   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 specified, 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.  No files are created or removed. This option is  equivalent  to  --decom-
              press --stdout except that the decompressed data is discarded instead of being written to standard output.

       -l, --list
              View  information  about  the  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.

              This feature has not been implemented yet.

   Operation modifiers
       -k, --keep
              Keep (don't delete) the input files.

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

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

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

              o  If combined with --decompress --stdout and xz doesn't recognize the type of the source file, xz will  copy  the
                 source  file as is to standard output. This allows using xzcat --force 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.  --format=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.

       --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 works also when writing to standard
              output as long as standard output 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 also 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 the filenames 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:

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

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

              o  lzma or alone: Compress to the legacy .lzma file format, or accept only .lzma  files  when  decompressing.  The
                 alternative name alone is provided for backwards compatibility with LZMA Utils.

              o  raw:  Compress  or  uncompress  a raw stream (no headers). This is meant for advanced users only. To decode raw
                 streams, you need to set not only --format=raw but also specify the  filter  chain,  which  would  normally  be
                 stored in the container format headers.

       -C check, --check=check
              Specify the type of the integrity check, which is calculated from the uncompressed data. This option has an effect
              only when compressing 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:

              o  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.

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

              o  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 difference is negligible.

              o  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.

       -0 ... -9
              Select compression preset. If a preset level is specified multiple times, the last one takes effect.

              The compression preset levels can be categorised roughly into three categories:

              -0 ... -2
                     Fast presets with relatively low memory usage.  -1 and -2 should give compression speed and ratios compara-
                     ble to bzip2 -1 and bzip2 -9, respectively.  Currently -0 is not very good (not much  faster  than  -1  but
                     much worse compression). In future, -0 may be indicate some fast algorithm instead of LZMA2.

              -3 ... -5
                     Good compression ratio with low to medium memory usage.  These are significantly slower than levels 0-2.

              -6 ... -9
                     Excellent compression with medium to high memory usage. These are also slower than the lower preset levels.
                     The default is -6.  Unless you want to maximize the compression ratio, you probably  don't  want  a  higher
                     preset level than -7 due to speed and memory usage.

              The  exact  compression settings (filter chain) used by each preset may vary between xz versions. The settings may
              also vary between files being compressed, if xz determines that modified settings will probably give  better  com-
              pression ratio without significantly affecting compression time or memory usage.

              Because  the  settings may vary, the memory usage may vary too. The following table lists the maximum memory usage
              of each preset level, which won't be exceeded even in future versions of xz.

              FIXME: The table below is just a rough idea.

                     Preset   Compression   Decompression
                       -0         6 MiB         1 MiB
                       -1         6 MiB         1 MiB
                       -2        10 MiB         1 MiB
                       -3        20 MiB         2 MiB
                       -4        30 MiB         3 MiB
                       -5        60 MiB         6 MiB
                       -6       100 MiB        10 MiB
                       -7       200 MiB        20 MiB
                       -8       400 MiB        40 MiB
                       -9       800 MiB        80 MiB

              When compressing, xz automatically adjusts the compression settings downwards if the memory usage limit  would  be
              exceeded, so it is safe to specify a high preset level even on systems that don't have lots of RAM.

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

              Especially the name of --best is misleading, because the definition of best depends on the input  data,  and  that
              usually people don't want the very best compression ratio anyway, because it would be very slow.

       -e, --extreme
              Modify  the  compression  preset (-0 ... -9) so that a little bit better compression ratio can be achieved without
              increasing memory usage of the compressor or decompressor (exception: compressor memory usage may increase a  lit-
              tle  with  presets -0 ... -2). The downside is that the compression time will increase dramatically (it can easily
              double).

       -M limit, --memory=limit
              Set the memory usage limit. If this option is specified multiple times, the last one takes effect. The  limit  can
              be specified in multiple ways:

              o  The  limit  can  be an absolute value in bytes. Using an integer suffix like MiB can be useful. Example: --mem-
                 ory=80MiB

              o  The limit can be specified as a percentage of physical RAM. Example: --memory=70%

              o  The limit can be reset back to its default value by setting it to 0.  See the section Memory usage for how  the
                 default limit is defined.

              o  The  memory  usage  limiting can be effectively disabled by setting limit to max.  This isn't recommended. It's
                 usually better to use, for example, --memory=90%.

              The current limit can be seen near the bottom of the output of the --long-help option.

       -T threads, --threads=threads
              Specify the maximum number of worker threads to use. The default is the number of available CPU cores. You can see
              the current value of threads near the end of the output of the --long-help option.

              The  actual  number of worker threads can be less than threads if using more threads would exceed the memory usage
              limit.  In addition to CPU-intensive worker threads, xz may use a few auxiliary threads, which don't use a lot  of
              CPU time.

              Multithreaded compression and decompression are not implemented yet, so this option has no effect for now.

   Custom compressor filter chains
       A  custom filter chain allows specifying the compression settings in detail instead of relying on the settings associated
       to the preset levels.  When a custom filter chain is specified, the compression preset  level  options  (-0  ...  -9  and
       --extreme) are silently ignored.

       A  filter  chain  is comparable to piping on the UN*X command line.  When compressing, the uncompressed 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 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  limita-
       tion 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 decoding raw streams (--format=raw), the filter chain is speci-
       fied 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.

       --lzma1[=options], --lzma2[=options]
              Add LZMA1 or LZMA2 filter to the filter chain. These filter 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.

                     The default preset is 6, from which the default values for the rest of  the  LZMA1  or  LZMA2  options  are
                     taken.

              dict=size
                     Dictionary  (history  buffer)  size indicates how many bytes of the recently processed uncompressed data is
                     kept in memory. One method to reduce size of the uncompressed data is to store distance-length pairs, which
                     indicate what data to repeat from the dictionary buffer. The bigger the dictionary, the better the compres-
                     sion ratio usually is, but dictionaries bigger than the uncompressed data are waste of RAM.

                     Typical dictionary size is from 64 KiB to 64 MiB. The minimum is 4 KiB.  The  maximum  for  compression  is
                     currently  1.5 GiB. The decompressor already supports dictionaries up to one byte less than 4 GiB, which is
                     the maximum for LZMA1 and LZMA2 stream formats.

                     Dictionary size has the biggest effect on compression ratio.  Dictionary size  and  match  finder  together
                     determine  the  memory usage of the LZMA1 or LZMA2 encoder. The same dictionary size is required for decom-
                     pressing that was used when compressing, thus the memory usage of the decoder is determined by the  dictio-
                     nary size used when compressing.

              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.

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

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

              mode=mode
                     Compression mode specifies the function used to analyze the data produced by the match  finder.   Supported
                     modes are fast and normal.  The default is fast for presets 0-2 and normal for presets 3-9.

              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.  Hash  Chains  are  usually  used  together  with
                     mode=fast and Binary Trees with mode=normal.  The memory usage formulas are only rough estimates, which are
                     closest to 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

                     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

              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 expense of speed. The
                     default depends on the preset level.

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

                     Using  very  high values for depth can make the encoder extremely slow with carefully crafted files.  Avoid
                     setting the depth over 1000 unless you are prepared to interrupt the compression in case it is  taking  too
                     long.

              When decoding raw streams (--format=raw), LZMA2 needs only the value of dict.  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 non-last filter in the
              filter chain.

              A BCJ filter converts relative addresses in the machine code to their absolute counterparts. This  doesn't  change
              the size of the data, but it increases redundancy, which allows e.g. LZMA2 to get better compression ratio.

              The  BCJ  filters are always reversible, so using a BCJ filter for wrong type of data doesn't cause any data loss.
              However, applying a BCJ filter for wrong type of data is a bad idea, because it  tends  to  make  the  compression
              ratio worse.

              Different instruction sets have have different alignment:

                     Filter      Alignment   Notes
                     x86             1       32-bit and 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 absolute 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.

                     Specifying a non-zero start offset is probably useful only if the executable  has  multiple  sections,  and
                     there  are many cross-section jumps or calls. Applying a BCJ filter separately for each section with proper
                     start offset and then compressing the result as a single chunk may give  some  improvement  in  compression
                     ratio compared to applying the BCJ filter with the default offset for the whole executable.

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

              Currently  only  simple  byte-wise  delta  calculation is supported. It can be useful when compressing e.g. uncom-
              pressed bitmap images or uncompressed PCM audio. However, special purpose algorithms may give significantly better
              results than Delta + LZMA2. This is true especially with audio, which compresses faster and better e.g. with FLAC.

              Supported options:

              dist=distance
                     Specify the distance of the delta calculation as 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 output 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 option 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 --ver-
              bose twice will give even more verbose output (useful mostly for debugging).

              The progress indicator shows the following information:

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

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

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

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

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

              o  Elapsed time or estimated time remaining.  Elapsed time is displayed in the format M:SS or H:MM:SS.  The  esti-
                 mated remaining time is displayed in a less precise format which never has colons, for example, 2 min 30 s. The
                 estimate can be 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.

              When  standard  error  is not a terminal, --verbose will make xz print the filename, compressed size, uncompressed
              size, compression ratio, speed, and elapsed time on a single line to standard error after  compressing  or  decom-
              pressing  the  file. If operating took at least a few seconds, also the speed and elapsed time are printed. 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 frontends 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 releases. Currently --robot is implemented only for --info-memory and --version, but the idea is
              to make it usable for actual compression and decompression too.

       --info-memory
              Display the current memory usage limit in human-readable format on a single line, and exit  successfully.  To  see
              how  much  RAM xz thinks your system has, use --memory=100% --info-memory.  To get machine-parsable output (memory
              usage limit as bytes without thousand separators), specify --robot before --info-memory.

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

       -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  machine-parsable  output,  specify
              --robot before --version.

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_OPT A space-separated list of options is parsed from XZ_OPT before parsing the options given on the command line. Note
              that only  options  are  parsed  from  XZ_OPT;  all  non-options  are  silently  ignored.  Parsing  is  done  with
              getopt_long(3) which is used also for the command line arguments.

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  incom-
       patibilities though, which may sometimes 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. Dictionary size is roughly equal to the decompressor memory usage.

              Level     xz      LZMA Utils
               -1      64 KiB     64 KiB
               -2     512 KiB      1 MiB
               -3       1 MiB    512 KiB
               -4       2 MiB      1 MiB
               -5       4 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
               -1       2 MiB          2 MiB
               -2       5 MiB         12 MiB
               -3      13 MiB         12 MiB
               -4      25 MiB         16 MiB
               -5      48 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 8 MiB dictionary by default.

   Streamed vs. non-streamed .lzma files
       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  decom-
       pressor  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 unknown 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
       uncompressed  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 dictionary size of 2^n (a power of 2), but accepts files with any  dictio-
       nary  size.   liblzma  accepts  only .lzma files which have dictionary 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  set-
       tings 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. This may break  obscure  scripts
       which have assumed that trailing 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 implementing --rsyncable to create rsyncable .xz files is not going to  happen  without  freezing  a
       part of the encoder implementation, which can then be used with --rsyncable.

   Embedded .xz decompressors
       Embedded .xz decompressor implementations like XZ Embedded don't necessarily support files created with 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.

SEE ALSO
       xzdec(1), gzip(1), bzip2(1)

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



Tukaani                                                    2010-03-07                                                      XZ(1)

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