bunzip2
Decompress bzip2 compressed files
TLDR
Decompress file
$ bunzip2 [file.txt.bz2]
Keep compressed file$ bunzip2 -k [file.txt.bz2]
Decompress to stdout$ bunzip2 -c [file.txt.bz2]
Test integrity$ bunzip2 -t [file.txt.bz2]
SYNOPSIS
bunzip2 [options] [file...]
DESCRIPTION
bunzip2 decompresses files compressed with bzip2. It's equivalent to `bzip2 -d` and removes the .bz2 file after successful decompression.
The tool is a companion to bzip2 for extracting compressed files.
PARAMETERS
-k, --keep
Keep compressed file-f, --force
Overwrite existing files-c, --stdout
Write to standard output-t, --test
Test file integrity-v, --verbose
Verbose mode-q, --quiet
Suppress warnings
WORKFLOW
$ # Decompress (removes .bz2)
bunzip2 file.txt.bz2
# Decompress keeping original
bunzip2 -k file.txt.bz2
# Decompress to stdout
bunzip2 -c file.txt.bz2 > file.txt
# Test without extracting
bunzip2 -t file.txt.bz2
bunzip2 file.txt.bz2
# Decompress keeping original
bunzip2 -k file.txt.bz2
# Decompress to stdout
bunzip2 -c file.txt.bz2 > file.txt
# Test without extracting
bunzip2 -t file.txt.bz2
CAVEATS
Removes original .bz2 file unless -k used. Requires memory proportional to compression block size. Cannot decompress corrupted files.
HISTORY
bunzip2 was included with bzip2 since its creation by Julian Seward in 1996.