--- /dev/null
+## Copyright (C) 2007-2012 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} =} gzip (@var{files})
+## @deftypefnx {Function File} {@var{entries} =} gzip (@var{files}, @var{outdir})
+## Compress the list of files and/or directories specified in @var{files}.
+## Each file is compressed separately and a new file with a '.gz' 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{gunzip, bzip2, zip, tar}
+## @end deftypefn
+
+function entries = gzip (varargin)
+ if (nargin != 1 && nargin != 2) || (nargout > 1)
+ print_usage ();
+ endif
+
+ if (nargout == 0)
+ __xzip__ ("gzip", "gz", "gzip -r %s", varargin{:});
+ else
+ entries = __xzip__ ("gzip", "gz", "gzip -r %s", varargin{:});
+ endif
+
+endfunction
+
+%!error <Invalid call to gzip. Correct usage is> gzip("1", "2", "3");
+%!error <Invalid call to gzip. Correct usage is> gzip();
+%!error <output directory does not exist> gzip("1", tmpnam);
+%!error <FILES must be a character array or cellstr> gzip(1);
+%!xtest
+%! # test gzip together with gunzip
+%! unwind_protect
+%! filename = tmpnam;
+%! dummy = 1;
+%! save(filename, "dummy");
+%! dirname = tmpnam;
+%! mkdir(dirname);
+%! entry = gzip(filename, dirname);
+%! [path, basename, extension] = fileparts(filename);
+%! if ! strcmp(entry, [dirname, filesep, basename, extension, ".gz"])
+%! error("gzipped file does not match expected name!");
+%! endif
+%! if ! exist(entry, "file")
+%! error("gzipped file cannot be found!");
+%! endif
+%! gunzip(entry);
+%! if (system(sprintf("diff %s %s%c%s%s", filename, dirname, filesep,
+%! basename, extension)))
+%! error("unzipped file not equal to original file!");
+%! end
+%! unwind_protect_cleanup
+%! delete(filename);
+%! delete([dirname, filesep, basename, extension]);
+%! rmdir(dirname);
+%! end_unwind_protect