Extracting the Contents of a .bz2 File

To extract the contents of a .bz2 file on a Linux or Unix system, such as Solaris, you can use the bunzip2 command.

bunzip2 file.bz2

The .bz2 file will be deleted when its contents are extracted. If you wish to keep the original .bz2 file, you can use the -k or --keep options.

     -k --keep
          Keep (don't delete) input files during  compression  or
          decompression.

References:

1. File Extension .BZ2 Details
   FilExt
2. Extract a bz2 or bzip2 file
   By: qmchenry
   Date: July 11, 2006
   Tech-Recipes
3. Running Linux
   By: Matt Welsh
   Third Edition, Chapter 7, Archive and Compression Utilities, pages 184-187

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