The
zlib
library is a general purpose data compression library.
The code is thread safe.
It provides in-memory compression and decompression functions,
including integrity checks of the uncompressed data.
This version of the library supports only one compression method (deflation)
but other algorithms will be added later and will have the same stream interface.
Compression can be done in a single step if the buffers are large enough
(for example if an input file is mmap'ed),
or can be done by repeated calls of the compression function.
In the latter case,
the application must provide more input and/or consume the output
(providing more output space) before each call.
The library also supports reading and writing files in
gzip
(.gz) format
with an interface similar to that of stdio.
The library does not install any signal handler. The decoder checks
the consistency of the compressed data, so the library should never
crash even in case of corrupted input.
All functions of the compression library are documented in the file
zlib.h.
The distribution source includes examples of use of the library
the files
example.c
and
minigzip.c .
A Java implementation of
zlib
is available in the Java Development Kit 1.1
http://www.javasoft.com/products/JDK/1.1/docs/api/Package-java.util.zip.html
A Perl interface to
zlib ,
written by Paul Marquess (pmarquess@bfsec.bt.co.uk)
is available at CPAN (Comprehensive Perl Archive Network) sites,
such as:
ftp://ftp.cis.ufl.edu/pub/perl/CPAN/modules/by-module/Compress/Compress-Zlib*
A Python interface to
zlib
written by A.M. Kuchling <amk@magnet.com>
is available from the Python Software Association sites, such as:
ftp://ftp.python.org/pub/python/contrib/Encoding/zlib*.tar.gz