bzip2 is similar to gzip in function and syntax. The difference is that bzip2 offers better compression and runs more slowly than gzip.

To compress a file using bzip2 use the command as follows:

      $ bzip2 filename

Extract a bzipped file as follows:

      $ bunzip2 filename.bz2

The way to compress to and extract from tar.bz2 files is similar to tar.gz, discussed earlier:

      $ tar -xjvf archive.tar.bz2

Here -j specifies compressing the archive in the bzip2 format.