diff -up gzip-1.3.13/gzip.1.noemptysuffix gzip-1.3.13/gzip.1
--- gzip-1.3.13/gzip.1.noemptysuffix	2009-09-26 20:43:28.000000000 +0200
+++ gzip-1.3.13/gzip.1	2010-02-22 14:29:54.828770607 +0100
@@ -291,15 +291,14 @@ will descend into the directory and comp
 ).
 .TP
 .B \-S .suf   --suffix .suf
-Use suffix .suf instead of .gz. Any suffix can be given, but suffixes
+When compressing, use suffix .suf instead of .gz.
+Any non-empty suffix can be given, but suffixes
 other than .z and .gz should be avoided to avoid confusion when files
-are transferred to other systems.  A null suffix forces gunzip to  try
-decompression on all given files regardless of suffix, as in:
+are transferred to other systems.
 
-    gunzip -S "" *       (*.* for MSDOS)
+When decompressing, add .suf to the beginning of the list of
+suffixes to try, when deriving an output file name from an input file name.
 
-Previous versions of gzip used
-the .z suffix. This was changed to avoid a conflict with
 .IR pack "(1)".
 .TP
 .B \-t --test
diff -up gzip-1.3.13/gzip.c.noemptysuffix gzip-1.3.13/gzip.c
--- gzip-1.3.13/gzip.c.noemptysuffix	2010-02-22 14:29:54.000000000 +0100
+++ gzip-1.3.13/gzip.c	2010-02-22 14:34:33.480895239 +0100
@@ -547,11 +547,11 @@ int main (argc, argv)
 		program_name);
     }
 #endif
-    if ((z_len == 0 && !decompress) || z_len > MAX_SUFFIX) {
-        fprintf(stderr, "%s: incorrect suffix '%s'\n",
-                program_name, z_suffix);
+    if (z_len == 0 || z_len > MAX_SUFFIX) {
+        fprintf(stderr, "%s: invalid suffix '%s'\n", program_name, z_suffix);
         do_exit(ERROR);
     }
+
     if (do_lzw && !decompress) work = lzw;
 
     /* Allocate all global buffers (for DYN_ALLOC option) */