In current state PXZ autodetects cores of the system and runs as many threads as system allows to. There is a limitation of number of threads that causes the input file not to be compressed with more threads if data to be compressed per thread smaller than a dictionary size for a particular LZMA compression level. This is to prevent poor compression ratios on small files. One can either limit maximal number of threads by the -T parameter or force it together with -f option. PXZ tries to use the same options as XZ does. Here a couple of examples:
| pxz <file1> <file2> ... | Compress file(s) with default compression and default number of threads |
| pxz -T4 <file> | Compress file with default compression and maximum of 4 threads |
| pxz -k -9 <file> | Use maximal compression and keep the original file, use default number of threads |
| pxz -f -T4 <file> | Compress file with default compression and with 4 threads |
| pxz -kvf -3 -T8 <file> | Use -3 compression, keep the original file, use 8 threads and show progress |