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<TITLE>bzip2 and libbzip2 - Introduction</TITLE>
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This program, <CODE>bzip2</CODE>,
and associated library <CODE>libbzip2</CODE>, are
Copyright (C) 1996-1998 Julian R Seward. All rights reserved.
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Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without
modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions
are met:
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Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright
notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer.
<LI>
The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must
not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this
software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product
documentation would be appreciated but is not required.
<LI>
Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must
not be misrepresented as being the original software.
<LI>
The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote
products derived from this software without specific prior written
permission.
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THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE
ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY
DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE
GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS
INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING
NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS
SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
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Julian Seward, Guildford, Surrey, UK.
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<CODE>jseward@acm.org</CODE>
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<CODE>bzip2</CODE>/<CODE>libbzip2</CODE> version 0.9.0c of 18 October 1998.
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PATENTS: To the best of my knowledge, <CODE>bzip2</CODE> does not use any patented
algorithms. However, I do not have the resources available to carry out
a full patent search. Therefore I cannot give any guarantee of the
above statement.
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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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