Editing Compress (software) (section)

{{Short description|Unix shell compression program based on the LZW compression algorithm}}
{{redirect|compress|the cloth used in medicine|Compress (medical)|other uses|Compression (disambiguation)}}
{{More citations needed|date=June 2012}}
{{lowercase title}}
{{Infobox software 
| name                   = compress / uncompress
| logo                   = 
| screenshot             = 
| screenshot size        = 
| caption                = 
| author                 = Spencer Thomas
| developer              = 
| released               = {{Start date and age|1985|2}}
| latest release version = 
| latest release date    = 
| operating system       = [[Unix]], [[Unix-like]], [[IBM i]]
| genre                  = [[Command (computing)|Command]]
| license                = 
| website                = 
}}
{{Infobox file format
| name      = compress .Z
| extension = .Z
| mime      = application/x-compress
| owner     = Spencer Thomas
| genre     = [[data compression]]
| website   = 
}}
'''compress''' is a [[Unix shell]] [[compression program]] based on the [[LZW]] compression algorithm.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://ncompress.sourceforge.net/ |title=ncompress: a public domain project |last=Frysinger |first=Mike |access-date=2014-07-30 |quote=Compress is a fast, simple LZW file compressor. Compress does not have the highest compression rate, but it is one of the fastest programs to compress data. Compress is the de facto standard in the UNIX community for compressing files. }}</ref> Compared to [[gzip]]'s fastest setting, compress is slightly slower at compression, slightly faster at decompression, and has a significantly lower [[Data compression ratio|compression ratio]].<ref>{{cite web |first=Luc|last=Gommans|title=compression - What's the difference between gzip and compress? |url=https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/412573 |website=Unix & Linux Stack Exchange |language=en}}</ref> 1.8 MiB of memory is used to compress the [[Hutter Prize]] data, slightly more than gzip's slowest setting.<ref>{{cite web |title=Large Text Compression Benchmark |url=http://mattmahoney.net/dc/text.html |website=mattmahoney.net |quote=compress 4.3d....}}</ref>

The '''uncompress''' utility will restore files to their original state after they have been compressed using the ''compress'' utility. If no files are specified, the [[standard input]] will be uncompressed to the standard output.