--- /dev/null
+## Copyright (C) 2008-2012 Thorsten Meyer
+## (based on gzip.m by David Bateman)
+##
+## This file is part of Octave.
+##
+## Octave is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it
+## under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
+## the Free Software Foundation; either version 3 of the License, or (at
+## your option) any later version.
+##
+## Octave is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
+## WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
+## MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
+## General Public License for more details.
+##
+## You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
+## along with Octave; see the file COPYING. If not, see
+## <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
+
+## -*- texinfo -*-
+## @deftypefn {Function File} {@var{entries} =} bzip2 (@var{files})
+## @deftypefnx {Function File} {@var{entries} =} bzip2 (@var{files}, @var{outdir})
+## Compress the list of files specified in @var{files}.
+## Each file is compressed separately and a new file with a '.bz2' extension
+## is created. The original files are not modified. Existing compressed files
+## are silently overwritten. If @var{outdir} is defined the compressed
+## files are placed in this directory.
+## @seealso{bunzip2, gzip, zip, tar}
+## @end deftypefn
+
+function entries = bzip2 (varargin)
+
+ if (nargin == 1 || nargin == 2)
+ if nargout == 0
+ __xzip__ ("bzip2", "bz2", "bzip2 %s", varargin{:});
+ else
+ entries = __xzip__ ("bzip2", "bz2", "bzip2 %s", varargin{:});
+ endif
+ else
+ print_usage ();
+ endif
+
+endfunction
+
+%!xtest
+%! # test for correct cleanup of temporary files
+%! unwind_protect
+%! filename = tmpnam;
+%! dummy = 1;
+%! save(filename, "dummy");
+%! n_tmpfiles_before = length(find(strncmp("oct-", cellstr(ls(P_tmpdir)), 4)));
+%! entry = bzip2(filename);
+%! n_tmpfiles_after = length(find(strncmp("oct-", cellstr(ls(P_tmpdir)), 4)));
+%! if (n_tmpfiles_before != n_tmpfiles_after)
+%! error("bzip2 has not cleaned up temporary files correctly!");
+%! endif
+%! unwind_protect_cleanup
+%! delete(filename);
+%! [path, basename, extension] = fileparts(filename);
+%! delete([basename, extension, ".bz2"]);
+%! end_unwind_protect