Numbers on my machine, ordered by compression duration: Compressor Duration Size cat 0.0s 11385584 [*] gzip -1 0.2s

Numbers on my machine, ordered by compression duration: Compressor Duration Size cat 0.0s 11385584 [*] gzip -1 0.2s 4918778 [*] bzip2 -1 0.9s 3334653 bzip2 -9 0.9s 3122347 [*] xz -1 1.1s 4222016 gzip -9 2.4s 4085818 lz5 -15 6.9s 4643261 xz -9 -e 10.7s 4033589 zpaq -m5 34.2s 2655834 [*] A [*] indicates that no better compressor was faster. Test methodology was `cat | $compressor > output` run 3-4 times to get an average. I'm surprised by how bzip2 turned out.