Gzip

File Format
Name	gzip
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Compression gzip
Extension(s)	.gz
MIME Type(s)	application/x-gzip
PRONOM	x-fmt/266

gzip is a compressed file format and command line utility used primarily on Unix-style operating systems, but available cross-platform. It uses DEFLATE compression.

Identification

gzip files begin with two signature bytes: 0x1f 0x8b. The third byte indicates the compression method, and is normally 0x08 (meaning DEFLATE).

Specifications

• RFC 1952

Software

• Original gzip
• GNU gzip

Links

• Wikipedia article