Gzip better than Bz2 ? Normal?

[Mike McCarty]

Franck Y wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> I ve got a strange behavior with bz2 and gzip.
> When i compress a small folder around 225 Mo the compression goes to
>   49 Mo for gzip
> 46 mo for bzip2
> 
> When i compress a bigger folder around 5 Go the compression goes to
> 2.6 Go for gzip
> 3.1  mo for bzip2

[snip]

Not surprising at all. It is a theorem that, for any compression
algorithm which makes the compressed version of some file
smaller than the uncompressed version, there is a file for
which the compressed version is *larger* than the uncompressed
version. Compression algorithms all make assumptions about the
form of the input data. How well any given collection of files
matches those assumptions determines how well the algorithm works
on that collection.

Mike
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