pbz2 0.1.1

Fast parallel bzip2 compression and decompression behind std::io::Read and Write, and a pbz2 command that replaces bzip2
Documentation

pbz2

Parallel bzip2 compression and decompression in Rust. Output is standard bzip2.

[dependencies]
pbz2 = "0.1"

let packed = pbz2::compress(b"hello hello hello", pbz2::Level::BEST);
assert_eq!(pbz2::decompress(&packed)?, b"hello hello hello");

let mut encoder = pbz2::ParallelEncoder::new(File::create("out.bz2")?, pbz2::Level::BEST);
io::copy(&mut File::open("in")?, &mut encoder)?;
encoder.finish()?;

API

Item Threads Interface
compress, decompress all cores in memory
ParallelEncoder all cores Write
ParallelDecoder all cores Read
EncoderWriter one Write
DecoderReader one Read

Level is 1 to 9. pbz2-core is the no_std engine underneath.

The default cli feature builds the pbz2 command. A library without it: pbz2 = { version = "0.1", default-features = false, features = ["simd"] }.

Command line

cargo install pbz2

pbz2 takes the same flags as bzip2 for everyday use: -z -d -t -c -k -f -q -v -1…-9 --fast --best, files or standard input, and the same output names, file attributes and exit codes (1 for file problems, 2 for damaged data). Linked or copied as bunzip2 or bzcat, it decompresses. -n N sets the number of threads; the default is one per core.

Not supported: Windows, the BZIP2 and BZIP environment variables, removing a partial output file on Ctrl-C, and bzip2recover. Compressed files are valid bzip2 but not byte for byte the same as bzip2 makes.

SIMD

The simd feature is on by default and chosen at compile time: NEON on aarch64, AVX2 or SSE4.2 on x86 when the target enables them (RUSTFLAGS="-C target-cpu=native").

Speed

Level 9, fastest of five interleaved runs. "All cores" is pbz2's default; the other parallel tools get the same thread count.

Apple M4, 10 cores:

bzip2 pbz2, 1 core pbz2, all cores lbzip2 pbzip2 7-Zip
Compress 300 MB tarball 10.9 s 4.6 s 0.73 s 1.11 s 1.70 s 21.2 s
Decompress it 3.9 s 1.5 s 0.30 s 0.54 s 3.8 s 1.7 s
Compress 126 MB Silesia 5.6 s 2.4 s 0.38 s 0.62 s 0.90 s 11.5 s
Decompress it 2.1 s 0.77 s 0.17 s 0.31 s 2.1 s 0.96 s

Intel i7-13700K, 24 threads, Linux, default build:

bzip2 pbz2, 1 core pbz2, all cores lbzip2 pbzip2
Compress 300 MB tarball 10.3 s 4.5 s 0.36 s 0.47 s 0.75 s
Decompress it 4.0 s 1.5 s 0.19 s 0.27 s 4.0 s
Compress 126 MB Silesia 5.4 s 2.4 s 0.20 s 0.28 s 0.39 s
Decompress it 2.1 s 0.76 s 0.11 s 0.16 s 2.1 s

Built with -C target-cpu=native (AVX2), pbz2 on one core takes 4.4 s, 1.5 s, 2.3 s and 0.76 s. pbzip2 decodes other tools' files on one thread. 7-Zip level 9 makes extra passes.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md and the AI policy. How pbz2 works, fuzzing and benchmarks: docs/how-it-works.md.

License

MIT, © Soof Golan. Third-party material: NOTICE.