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authorLasse Collin <lasse.collin@tukaani.org>2009-11-25 11:19:20 +0200
committerLasse Collin <lasse.collin@tukaani.org>2009-11-25 11:19:20 +0200
commit465d1b0d6518c5d980f2db4c2d769f9905bdd902 (patch)
treea4268eaa071e4cc52da9d56cb5c76168c604ff75 /src/xz/xz.1
parentUpdated THANKS. (diff)
downloadxz-465d1b0d6518c5d980f2db4c2d769f9905bdd902.tar.xz
Create sparse files by default when decompressing into
a regular file. Sparse file creation can be disabled with --no-sparse. I don't promise yet that the name of this option won't change before 5.0.0. It's possible that the code, that checks when it is safe to use sparse output on stdout, is not good enough, and a more flexible command line option is needed to configure sparse file handling.
Diffstat (limited to 'src/xz/xz.1')
-rw-r--r--src/xz/xz.111
1 files changed, 11 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/src/xz/xz.1 b/src/xz/xz.1
index b8115624..94aa562e 100644
--- a/src/xz/xz.1
+++ b/src/xz/xz.1
@@ -336,6 +336,17 @@ Write the compressed or decompressed data to standard output instead of
a file. This implies
.BR \-\-keep .
.TP
+.B \-\-no\-sparse
+Disable creation of sparse files. By default, if decompressing into
+a regular file,
+.B xz
+tries to make the file sparse if the decompressed data contains long
+sequences of binary zeros. It works also when writing to standard output
+as long as standard output is connected to a regular file, and certain
+additional conditions are met to make it safe. Creating sparse files may
+save disk space and speed up the decompression by reducing the amount of
+disk I/O.
+.TP
\fB\-S\fR \fI.suf\fR, \fB\-\-suffix=\fI.suf
When compressing, use
.I .suf