Compress (Unix)

File Format
Name	compress
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Compression compress
Extension(s)	.Z, .z
MIME Type(s)	application/x-compress

compress is a Unix command line utility, and a general-purpose compressed file format. Its compression algorithm is based on LZW.

Identifiers

The conventional filename extension is a capitalized .Z. We list lowercase .z as well, only because filenames are not always case-sensitive.

Identification

Files begin with bytes 1F 9D.

See also

• pack - A compressed file format with a similar filename extension.

Software

• ncompress
• Gzip can uncompress .Z files.
• 7-Zip
• liblzw
• Windows port of Compress utility

External links

• Wikipedia article