Re: [Lzip-bug] Feature Request/Question - Compression Level Information

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Timothy Beryl Grahek wrote:
> That is extremely helpful, thank you so much.

You are welcome. :-)


> What is the reason that you chose to indicate to some extent
> compression levels by dictionary size rather than by the level
> numbers themselves? Is it because it's more informative to use
> dictionary sizes exclusively?

The lzip format is supposed to be as simple as possible, and the 
dictionary size is the only information needed to decompress the file. 
The other parameter (match length limit) is not needed.

The compression level does not offer accurate information because it is 
an arbitrary mapping to tuples {dictionary size, match length limit}. 
This mapping was different in old versions of lzip.

Moreover, any combination of '--dictionary-size' and '--match-length' 
can be specified in the command line, which will usually not correspond 
to any concrete compression level.


Best regards,
Antonio.