zlib 1.3.1 Manual zlib 1.3.1 Manual Contents Prologue Version Introduction Stream Data Structures Structures Usage Constants Basic Functions Advanced Functions Utility Functions gzip File Access Functions Checksum Functions Undocumented Functions Prologue zlib general purpose compression library version 1.3.1, January 22nd, 2024 Copyright (C) 1995-2024 Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler This software is provided 'as-is', without any express or implied warranty. In no event will the authors be held liable for any damages arising from the use of this software. Permission is granted to anyone to use this software for any purpose, including commercial applications, and to alter it and redistribute it freely, subject to the following restrictions: The origin of this software must not be misrepresented; you must not claim that you wrote the original software. If you use this software in a product, an acknowledgment in the product documentation would be appreciated but is not required. Altered source versions must be plainly marked as such, and must not be misrepresented as being the original software. This notice may not be removed or altered from any source distribution. Jean-loup Gailly Mark Adler The data format used by the zlib library is described by RFCs (Request for Comments) 1950 to 1952 in the files rfc1950 (zlib format), rfc1951 (deflate format) and rfc1952 (gzip format). Version #define ZLIB_VERSION "1.3.1" #define ZLIB_VERNUM 0x1310 Introduction The zlib compression library 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 compressed data format used by default by the in-memory functions is the zlib format, which is a zlib wrapper documented in RFC 1950, wrapped around a deflate stream, which is itself documented in RFC 1951. The library also supports reading and writing files in gzip (.gz) format with an interface similar to that of stdio using the functions that start with "gz". The gzip format is different from the zlib format. gzip is a gzip wrapper, documented in RFC 1952, wrapped around a deflate stream. This library can optionally read and write gzip and raw deflate streams in memory as well. The zlib format was designed to be compact and fast for use in memory and on communications channels. The gzip format was designed for single- file compression on file systems, has a larger header than zlib to maintain directory information, and uses a different, slower check method than zlib. 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 the case of corrupted input. Stream Data Structures typedef voidpf (*alloc_func)(voidpf opaque, uInt items, uInt size); typedef void (*free_func)(voidpf opaque, voidpf address); struct internal_state; typedef struct z_stream_s { z_const Bytef *next_in; /* next input byte */ uInt avail_in; /* number of bytes available at next_in */ uLong total_in; /* total number of input bytes read so far */ Bytef *next_out; /* next output byte will go here */ uInt avail_out; /* remaining free space at next_out */ uLong total_out; /* total number of bytes output so far */ z_const char *msg; /* last error message, NULL if no error */ struct internal_state FAR *state; /* not visible by applications */ alloc_func zalloc; /* used to allocate the internal state */ free_func zfree; /* used to free the internal state */ voidpf opaque; /* private data object passed to zalloc and zfree */ int data_type; /* best guess about the data type: binary or text for deflate, or the decoding state for inflate */ uLong adler; /* Adler-32 or CRC-32 value of the uncompressed data */ uLong reserved; /* reserved for future use */ } z_stream; typedef z_stream FAR *z_streamp; gzip header information passed to and from zlib routines. See RFC 1952 for more details on the meanings of these fields. typedef struct gz_header_s { int text; /* true if compressed data believed to be text */ uLong time; /* modification time */ int xflags; /* extra flags (not used when writing a gzip file) */ int os; /* operating system */ Bytef *extra; /* pointer to extra field or Z_NULL if none */ uInt extra_len; /* extra field length (valid if extra != Z_NULL) */ uInt extra_max; /* space at extra (only when reading header) */ Bytef *name; /* pointer to zero-terminated file name or Z_NULL */ uInt name_max; /* space at name (only when reading header) */ Bytef *comment; /* pointer to zero-terminated comment or Z_NULL */ uInt comm_max; /* space at comment (only when reading header) */ int hcrc; /* true if there was or will be a header crc */ int done; /* true when done reading gzip header (not used when writing a gzip file) */ } gz_header; typedef gz_header FAR *gz_headerp; Structures Usage The application must update next_in and avail_in when avail_in has dropped to zero. It must update next_out and avail_out when avail_out has dropped to zero. The application must initialize zalloc, zfree and opaque before calling the init function. All other fields are set by the compression library and must not be updated by the application. The opaque value provided by the application will be passed as the first parameter for calls of zalloc and zfree. This can be useful for custom memory management. The compression library attaches no meaning to the opaque value. zalloc must return Z_NULL if there is not enough memory for the object. If zlib is used in a multi-threaded application, zalloc and zfree must be thread safe. In that case, zlib is thread-safe. When zalloc and zfree are Z_NULL on entry to the initialization function, they are set to internal routines that use the standard library functions malloc() and free(). On 16-bit systems, the functions zalloc and zfree must be able to allocate exactly 65536 bytes, but will not be required to allocate more than this if the symbol MAXSEG_64K is defined (see zconf.h). WARNING: On MSDOS, pointers returned by zalloc for objects of exactly 65536 bytes must have their offset normalized to zero. The default allocation function provided by this library ensures this (see zutil.c). To reduce memory requirements and avoid any allocation of 64K objects, at the expense of compression ratio, compile the library with -DMAX_WBITS=14 (see zconf.h). The fields total_in and total_out can be used for statistics or progress reports. After compression, total_in holds the total size of the uncompressed data and may be saved for use by the decompressor (particularly if the decompressor wants to decompress everything in a single step). Constants Allowed flush values; see deflate() and inflate() below for details. #define Z_NO_FLUSH 0 #define Z_PARTIAL_FLUSH 1 #define Z_SYNC_FLUSH 2 #define Z_FULL_FLUSH 3 #define Z_FINISH 4 #define Z_BLOCK 5 #define Z_TREES 6 Return codes for the compression/decompression functions. Negative values are errors, positive values are used for special but normal events. #define Z_OK 0 #define Z_STREAM_END 1 #define Z_NEED_DICT 2 #define Z_ERRNO (-1) #define Z_STREAM_ERROR (-2) #define Z_DATA_ERROR (-3) #define Z_MEM_ERROR (-4) #define Z_BUF_ERROR (-5) #define Z_VERSION_ERROR (-6) Compression levels. #define Z_NO_COMPRESSION 0 #define Z_BEST_SPEED 1 #define Z_BEST_COMPRESSION 9 #define Z_DEFAULT_COMPRESSION (-1) Compression strategy — see deflateInit2() below for details. #define Z_FILTERED 1 #define Z_HUFFMAN_ONLY 2 #define Z_RLE 3 #define Z_FIXED 4 #define Z_DEFAULT_STRATEGY 0 Possible values of the data_type field for deflate(). #define Z_BINARY 0 #define Z_TEXT 1 #define Z_ASCII Z_TEXT /* for compatibility with 1.2.2 and earlier */ #define Z_UNKNOWN 2 The deflate compression method (the only one supported in this version). #define Z_DEFLATED 8 For initializing zalloc, zfree, opaque. #define Z_NULL 0 For compatibility with versions #define zlib_version zlibVersion() Basic Functions ZEXTERN const char * ZEXPORT zlibVersion(void); The application can compare zlibVersion and ZLIB_VERSION for consistency. If the first character differs, the library code actually used is not compatible with the zlib.h header file used by the application. This check is automatically made by deflateInit and inflateInit. ZEXTERN int ZEXPORT deflateInit(z_streamp strm, int level); Initializes the internal stream state for compression. The fields zalloc, zfree and opaque must be initialized before by the caller. If zalloc and zfree are set to Z_NULL, deflateInit updates them to use default allocation functions. total_in, total_out, adler, and msg are initialized. The compression level must be Z_DEFAULT_COMPRESSION, or between 0 and 9: 1 gives best speed, 9 gives best compression, 0 gives no compression at all (the input data is simply copied a block at a time). Z_DEFAULT_COMPRESSION requests a default compromise between speed and compression (currently equivalent to level 6). deflateInit returns Z_OK if success, Z_MEM_ERROR if there was not enough memory, Z_STREAM_ERROR if level is not a valid compression level, Z_VERSION_ERROR if the zlib library version (zlib_version) is incompatible with the version assumed by the caller (ZLIB_VERSION). msg is set to null if there is no error message. deflateInit does not perform any compression: this will be done by deflate(). ZEXTERN int ZEXPORT deflate(z_streamp strm, int flush); deflate compresses as much data as possible, and stops when the input buffer becomes empty or the output buffer becomes full. It may introduce some output latency (reading input without producing any output) except when forced to flush. The detailed semantics are as follows. deflate performs one or both of the following actions: Compress more input starting at next_in and update next_in and avail_in accordingly. If not all input can be processed (because there is not enough room in the output buffer), next_in and avail_in are updated and processing will resume at this point for the next call of deflate(). Generate more output starting at next_out and update next_out and avail_out accordingly. This action is forced if the parameter flush is non zero. Forcing flush frequently degrades the compression ratio, so this parameter should be set only when necessary. Some output may be provided even if flush is zero. Before the call of deflate(), the application should ensure that at least one of the actions is possible, by providing more input and/or consuming more output, and updating avail_in or avail_out accordingly; avail_out should never be zero before the call. The application can consume the compressed output when it wants, for example when the output buffer is full (avail_out == 0), or after each call of deflate(). If deflate returns Z_OK and with zero avail_out, it must be called again after making room in the buffer because there might be more output pending. See deflatePending(), which can be used if desired to determine whether or not there is more output in that case. Normally the parameter flush is set to Z_NO_FLUSH, which allows deflate to decide how much data to accumulate before producing output, in order to maximize compression. If the parameter flush is set to Z_SYNC_FLUSH, all pending output is flushed to the output buffer and the output is aligned on a byte boundary, so that the decompressor can get all input data available so far. (In particular avail_in is zero after the call if enough output space has been provided before the call.) Flushing may degrade compression for some compression algorithms and so it should be used only wh…