GZip every file separately
You can use gzip *
Note:
- This will zip each file individually and DELETE the original.
- Use
-k(--keep) option to keep the original files. - This may not work if you have a huge number of files due to limits of the shell
- To run gzip in parallel see @MarkSetchell's answer below.
After seven years, this highly upvoted comment still doesn't have its own full-fledged answer, so I'm promoting it now:
gzip -r .
This has two advantages over the currently accepted answer: it works recursively if there are any subdirectories, and it won't fail from Argument list too long if the number of files is very large.
Easy and very fast answer that will use all your CPU cores in parallel:
parallel gzip ::: *
GNU Parallel is a fantastic tool that should be used far more in this world where CPUs are only getting more cores rather than more speed. There are loads of examples that we would all do well to take 10 minutes to read... here