This package contains libbzip2 which is used by the bzip2 compressor.

bzip2 is a freely available, patent free, high-quality data compressor. it typically compresses files to within 10% to 15% of the best available techniques, whilst being around twice as fast at compression and six times faster at decompression.

bzip2 compresses files using the burrows-wheeler block-sorting text compression algorithm, and huffman coding. compression is generally considerably better than that achieved by more conventional lz77/lz78-based compressors, and approaches the performance of the ppm family of statistical compressors.

the archive file format of bzip2 (.bz2) is incompatible with that of its predecessor, bzip (.bz).