Well, I would imagine it has as much to do with the file's contents as with its size -- for (an extreme) example:
echo 'aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa' > textfile nujoma:~> ls -l textfile -rw-r--r-- 1 aperrin aperrin 56 Dec 7 13:38 textfile nujoma:~> ls -l testimg.jpg -r--r--r-- 1 aperrin aperrin 5756 Dec 7 13:38 testimg.jpg nujoma:~> bzip2 textfile nujoma:~> bzip2 testimg.jpg nujoma:~> ls -l textfile* -rw-r--r-- 1 aperrin aperrin 43 Dec 7 13:38 textfile.bz2 nujoma:~> ls -l testimg.jpg.bz2 -r--r--r-- 1 aperrin aperrin 6145 Dec 7 13:38 testimg.jpg.bz2 nujoma:~> bunzip2 textfile.bz2 nujoma:~> bunzip2 testimg.jpg.bz2 nujoma:~> gzip textfile nujoma:~> gzip testimg.jpg nujoma:~> ls -l textfile.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 aperrin aperrin 34 Dec 7 13:38 textfile.gz nujoma:~> ls -l testimg.jpg.gz -r--r--r-- 1 aperrin aperrin 5649 Dec 7 13:38 testimg.jpg.gz highly-repetetive text file: 23% with bzip2, 39% with gzip already-compressed jpeg file: -6% with bzip2, 1.8% with gzip ap ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Andrew J Perrin - [EMAIL PROTECTED] - http://www.unc.edu/~aperrin Assistant Professor of Sociology, U of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 269 Hamilton Hall, CB#3210, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3210 USA On Thu, 6 Dec 2001, Debian User wrote: > Hi there! > > I have just found out that bzip2 is _really_ _great_ for large files. > I have tar'ed a whole debian-installation (1.2 gigs). > This tar, compressed with gzip, has a size of ~390MB. > The same tar, compressed with bzip2 has a size of 110MB!!! > > So for every body out there: If you have a large file to compress > (and enogh time resp. CPU-power) then check out bzip2. > It is much slower than gzip, but (at leas for sufficient large files) > much better. > > So long > > Andreas Maresch > > ------------------------------ > > > -- > To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] > with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] > >
