File Compression with gzip

Often it would be nice to make a file smaller - say, to download it faster, or so it takes up less space on your disk. The program to do this is called gzip (GNU zip). Here's how it works:

$ cd; cp /etc/profile ./mysamplefile

This switches to your home directory and copies an arbitrarily chosen file (/etc/profile) to your current directory, in the process renaming it mysamplefile. This gives you a file to play with when using gzip.

$ ls -l

Lists the contents of the current directory. Note the size of mysamplefile.

$ gzip mysamplefile

Compresses mysamplefile.

$ ls -l

Observe the results of this command: mysamplefile is now called mysamplefile.gz . It's also a good bit smaller.

$ gunzip mysamplefile.gz; ls -l

This uncompresses the file. Observe that mysamplefile has returned to its original state. Notice that to uncompress, one uses gunzip, not gzip.

$ rm mysamplefile

Use this command to remove the file, since it was just to practice with.