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<TITLE>bzip2 and libbzip2 - Introduction</TITLE>
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<H1><A NAME="SEC1" HREF="manual_toc.html#TOC1">Introduction</A></H1>

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<CODE>bzip2</CODE>  compresses  files  using the Burrows-Wheeler 
block-sorting text compression algorithm,  and  Huffman  coding.
Compression  is  generally  considerably  better than that
achieved by more conventional LZ77/LZ78-based compressors,
and  approaches  the performance of the PPM family of statistical compressors.

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<CODE>bzip2</CODE> is built on top of <CODE>libbzip2</CODE>, a flexible library
for handling compressed data in the <CODE>bzip2</CODE> format.  This manual
describes both how to use the program and 
how to work with the library interface.  Most of the
manual is devoted to this library, not the program, 
which is good news if your interest is only in the program.

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Chapter 2 describes how to use <CODE>bzip2</CODE>; this is the only part 
you need to read if you just want to know how to operate the program.
Chapter 3 describes the programming interfaces in detail, and
Chapter 4 records some miscellaneous notes which I thought
ought to be recorded somewhere.

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