utilities that compress data files or archives use complex algorithms to reduce the size of the file
these are some compressing and uncompressing utilities you may find in your linux system.

* compress - uses an algorithm representing commonly used character strings with a generated number list to reduce the effective size of a file. No archving or writing to media takes place. Compressed files are given a "dot-Z" extension and can be restored with uncompress, gunzip or gzip -d command. the compress utility is largely being replaced by gzip

* uncompress - uncompressed files that were created with comporess. this utility is being replaced by gunzip

* manunpack - extracts macintosh files from an archive.

* gzip - compresses files and adds .gz extension. this utility is often used to compress a tar archive for transfer between systems. files can be uncompressed using gzip -d, gunzip or zcat

* gunzip - uncompresses files that were compressed with gzip

* compact - an older compression scheme uses a .C extension, produces less compression and odes not work with other compression utilities (UNIX ONLY)

* uncompact - uncompresses files built by compress (UNIX ONLY)



the previouis utitiles created archives or comporessed files. the follwing utitlies are used to craete archives of comporessed files, then to uncompress selected files from the archive as needed.

* zip - creates an archive of a directory tree and tis files in compressed format. it works like a combination of the UNIX commands tar and gzip. it is available on UNIX, VMS, MS-DOS, OS/2, Widnwos NT, Mnix, Atari, and Macintosh

* unzip - uncompresses a file, directory, or archive that was comporessed with zip. it can be used as filter for extrating from a ZIP archive in a pipe line

* zipinfo - lists detilaed information about a ZIP archive.

* zmore - displays a zipped file one page at a time by unzipping data as needed.

* zcat - behaves like UNIX cat utility. it accesses specified files from a zip archive, reads them, uncompresses the data and writes it to output. the archive is not affected just read

* zcmp - compares two files from a zip archive by uncompressing the data and passing it to cmp. the archive remains comporessed