Winix.Squeeze 0.4.0

squeeze

Compress and decompress files using gzip, brotli, or zstd.

Supports pipe mode (stdin/stdout), multi-file batch processing, and gzip-compatible flags for muscle memory.

Multi-format gzip replacement (and works on Linux/macOS too).

Install

Scoop (Windows)

scoop bucket add winix https://github.com/Yortw/winix
scoop install winix/squeeze

Winget (Windows, stable releases)

winget install Winix.Squeeze

.NET Tool (cross-platform)

dotnet tool install -g Winix.Squeeze

Direct Download

Download native binaries from GitHub Releases.

Usage

squeeze [options] [file...]

Examples

# Compress a file (gzip, keeps original)
squeeze data.csv

# Decompress (auto-detects format)
squeeze -d data.csv.gz

# Use brotli at maximum compression
squeeze --brotli --level 11 largefile.bin

# Use zstd (fast default)
squeeze --zstd data.csv

# Pipe mode — compress stdin to stdout
cat data.csv | squeeze > data.csv.gz

# Pipe mode — decompress
cat data.csv.gz | squeeze -d > data.csv

# Stdout mode — decompress to stdout
squeeze -c -d archive.gz | head -20

# Explicit output file
squeeze -o compressed.gz data.csv

# gzip-compatible shortcuts
squeeze -9 data.csv          # max compression
squeeze -1 data.csv          # fastest compression
squeeze -d -c archive.gz     # decompress to stdout

# Batch compress
squeeze *.log

# JSON output for scripts
squeeze --json data.csv

Output Formats

Human (terminal, stderr):

data.csv → data.csv.gz  1,234,567 → 456,789 (63.0% saved)  gzip/6  0.12s

JSON (--json, stderr):

{"tool":"squeeze","version":"0.1.0","exit_code":0,"exit_reason":"success","files":[{"input":"data.csv","output":"data.csv.gz","input_bytes":1234567,"output_bytes":456789,"ratio":0.630,"format":"gz","level":6,"seconds":0.120}]}

Options

Compression Levels

Wildcards on Windows

cmd.exe and PowerShell don't expand */? wildcards before starting programs, so squeeze expands them itself on Windows — squeeze *.log works the same as in bash. * and ? work in any path segment. [...] is matched literally (brackets are legal Windows filename characters), and ** is rejected with an error — use Git Bash for recursive patterns. A pattern that matches nothing is passed through unchanged, so you get the normal "not found" error. In cmd, quoting a pattern ("*.log") suppresses expansion; PowerShell removes quotes before squeeze sees them, so use --% there if you need a literal. On Linux/macOS your shell expands wildcards as usual and squeeze does nothing extra.

Exit Codes

When decompressing, gzip streams are validated against their RFC 1952 trailer (CRC32 + ISIZE). Truncated or corrupt streams that .NET's GZipStream would silently treat as terminated are rejected with exit 1.

Known limitation: multi-member gzip is rejected as corrupt. Concatenated gzip streams (cat a.gz b.gz, gzip file1 file2 && cat *.gz) currently fail the ISIZE check because the LAST member's ISIZE doesn't match the cumulative decompressed bytes. squeeze emits the full content to stdout, then exits 1. Workaround: use gzip -dc concat.gz directly, or decompress members individually. The trade-off was deliberate — preferring loud false-positive on rare multi-member input over silent corruption on common incompressible-truncation input. A future version may add member-by-member parsing.

The format field in JSON output emits the short form (gz, br, zst).

The errors JSON field is present (array of strings) when exit_reason is partial_failure or failure, listing per-file error messages.

Colour

• Automatic: colour when outputting to a terminal, plain when piped
• --color forces colour on (overrides NO_COLOR)
• --no-color forces colour off
• Respects the NO_COLOR environment variable (no-color.org)

Part of Winix

squeeze is part of the Winix CLI toolkit.