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compress

 
Dictionary: com·press   (kəm-prĕs') pronunciation
 
tr.v., -pressed, -press·ing, -press·es.
  1. To press together: compressed her lips.
  2. To make more compact by or as if by pressing.
  3. Computer Science. To transform (data) to minimize the space required for storage or transmission: compressed the file so that it could be downloaded efficiently.
n. (kŏm'prĕs')
  1. Medicine. A soft pad of gauze or other material applied with pressure to a part of the body to control hemorrhage or to supply heat, cold, moisture, or medication to alleviate pain or reduce infection.
  2. A machine for compressing material.

[Middle English compressen, from Old French compresser, from Late Latin compressāre, frequentative of Latin comprimere : com-, com- + premere, to press.]


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(1) To compact data to save space. See data compression and archive program.

(2) A Unix utility used to compress files. This is the perfect example of poor technical naming. When a common name is used to name a function, it becomes tedious to document the process. For example, "use gzip to compress the file instead of compress because..." See archive formats, tar, gzip and data compression.

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Thesaurus: compress
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verb

  1. To subject to compression: compact, constrict, constringe, squeeze. See tighten/loosen.
  2. To reduce in size, as by drawing together: compact, constrict, constringe, contract, shrink. See increase/decrease.

 
Antonyms: compress
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v

Definition: compact, condense
Antonyms: blow up, expand, extend, fill, increase, loosen, stretch, uncompress, uncondense


 
Hacker Slang: compress
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[Unix] When used without a qualifier, generally refers to crunching of a file using a particular C implementation of compression by Joseph M. Orost et al.: and widely circulated via Usenet; use of crunch itself in this sense is rare among Unix hackers. Specifically, compress is built around the Lempel-Ziv-Welch algorithm as described in “A Technique for High Performance Data Compression”, Terry A. Welch, IEEE Computer, vol. 17, no. 6 (June 1984), pp. 8--19.


 

In medicine, a firm bandage that may hold an ice-pad or heat-pad against an injured area.

 
Veterinary Dictionary: compress
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A square of gauze or similar dressing, for application of pressure or medication to a restricted area, or for local applications of heat or cold.

 
Wikipedia: Compress
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compress
Filename extension .Z
Internet media type application/x-compress
Developed by Spencer Thomas
Type of format data compression

compress is a UNIX compression program based on the LZC compression method, which is an LZW implementation using variable size pointers as in LZ78.

Contents

Description of program

Files compressed by compress are typically given the extension .Z. Most tar programs will pipe their data through compress when given the command line option -Z (tar in itself does not compress, it just stores multiple files within one tape archive file).

Files can be returned to their original state using uncompress. The usual action of the program is not to create an uncompressed copy of the file, but to uncompress the compressed file (so that the uncompressed version retains the timestamp and other attributes of the compressed file).

The LZW algorithm used in compress was patented by Sperry Research Center in 1983. The person who applied for the patent published an IEEE article on the algorithm in 1984[1], without mentioning that the algorithm was patent pending. Spencer Thomas took this article and implemented compress in 1984, without realizing that the LZW algorithm was patent pending. (The GIF image format also incorporated LZW compression in this way and later Unisys claimed royalties on implementations of GIF.) Joseph M. Orost led the team and worked with Spencer et al. to create the 'final' (4.0) version of compress and published it as free software to the 'comp.sources.unix' USENET group in 1985. The patent on LZW compression was granted in 1985 and this is why compress could not be used without paying royalties to Sperry Research (which became Unisys). compress has fallen out of favor in particular user-groups because it makes use of the LZW algorithm, which is covered by UNISYS and IBM patents — because of this, gzip and bzip2 increased in popularity on Linux-based operating systems due to their alternative algorithms. compress has however maintained a presence on Unix and BSD systems. The LZW patent expired in 2003, so it is now in the public domain in the United States.

'compress' for Mac OS X

There is also a Freeware Mac OS X application with the same name, but it is completely unrelated with the former. This program supports the zip, 7z, bzip2, gzip, and tar formats. A much earlier program dating from the 1980s, MacCompress, is a Mac OS GUI wrapper for compress, but has not been used for some time. The Darwin operating system includes a compress utility as described above.

See also

External links

References

  1. ^ Welch, Terry A., "A technique for high performance data compression", IEEE Computer, 17(6), pp.8-19, June 1984.

 
Translations: Compress
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Dansk (Danish)
v. tr. - komprimere, sammentrænge
n. - kompres, omslag

Nederlands (Dutch)
kompres, katoenbaalmachine, samenpersen, comprimeren

Français (French)
v. tr. - comprimer, pincer (les lèvres), (fig) condenser, réduire
n. - compresse

Deutsch (German)
v. - komprimieren, zusammenpressen
n. - Kompresse

Ελληνική (Greek)
v. - συμπιέζω/-ομαι, συνθλίβω/-ομαι, πατικώνω/-ομαι
n. - (ιατρ.) επίθεμα, κομπρέσα

Italiano (Italian)
comprimere, compressa

Português (Portuguese)
v. - comprimir, resumir
n. - compressa (f)

Русский (Russian)
сжимать, компресс

Español (Spanish)
v. tr. - comprimir, condensar
n. - compresa

Svenska (Swedish)
v. - pressa ihop, komprimera, tränga ihop/samman
n. - kompress

中文(简体)(Chinese (Simplified))
压缩, 摘要叙述, 湿敷布, 打包机

中文(繁體)(Chinese (Traditional))
v. tr. - 壓縮, 摘要敘述
n. - 濕敷布, 打包機

한국어 (Korean)
v. tr. - 압축하다, 요약하다
n. - 압박붕대, 압착기계

日本語 (Japanese)
v. - 圧縮する, 圧縮して詰める, 要約する
n. - 湿布

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(فعل) ضغط, كبس, ركز (الاسم) كمادة ( قطعه قماش لمنع النزيف مثلا)‏

עברית (Hebrew)
v. tr. - ‮רטייה, תחבושת‬
n. - ‮דחס, תמצת, כיווץ‬


 
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