File Size

[David Shaw]

On Thu, Feb 07, 2002 at 12:53:06PM -0500, R. Bradley Tilley wrote:
> Hello GNU Freedom loving people of the world!
> 
> This is not a problem, only a question:
> 
> Why is the output from GNUpg smaller than the input? For example, I have a 
> files that is 36,232,576 bytes before encryption, but is only 34,463,967 
> bytes after encryption. It seems that encryption would make it a bit bigger, 
> but it does just the opposite.
> 
> Is there some sort of compression that takes place during the process? 

You got it.  GnuPG compresses the input before encrypting it, so even
though the processing adds some data, the resulting file is usually a
bit smaller than the original.

You can tweak the compression details with the --compress-algo and -z
options.

David

-- 
   David Shaw  |  dshaw@jabberwocky.com  |  WWW http://www.jabberwocky.com/
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