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File FAQ.pod

=head1 NAME

IO::Compress::FAQ -- Frequently Asked Questions about IO::Compress

=head1 DESCRIPTION

Common questions answered.

=head1 GENERAL

=head2 Compatibility with Unix compress/uncompress.

Although C<Compress::Zlib> has a pair of functions called C<compress> and
C<uncompress>, they are I<not> related to the Unix programs of the same
name. The C<Compress::Zlib> module is not compatible with Unix
C<compress>.

If you have the C<uncompress> program available, you can use this to read
compressed files

open F, "uncompress -c $filename |";
    while (<F>)
    {
        ...

Alternatively, if you have the C<gunzip> program available, you can use
this to read compressed files

open F, "gunzip -c $filename |";
    while (<F>)
    {
        ...

and this to write compress files, if you have the C<compress> program
available

open F, "| compress -c $filename ";
    print F "data";
    ...
    close F ;

=head2 Accessing .tar.Z files

The C<Archive::Tar> module can optionally use C<Compress::Zlib> (via the
C<IO::Zlib> module) to access tar files that have been compressed with
C<gzip>. Unfortunately tar files compressed with the Unix C<compress>
utility cannot be read by C<Compress::Zlib> and so cannot be directly
accessed by C<Archive::Tar>.

If the C<uncompress> or C<gunzip> programs are available, you can use one
of these workarounds to read C<.tar.Z> files from C<Archive::Tar>

Firstly with C<uncompress>

use strict;
    use warnings;
    use Archive::Tar;

open F, "uncompress -c $filename |";
    my $tar = Archive::Tar->new(*F);
    ...

and this with C<gunzip>

use strict;
    use warnings;
    use Archive::Tar;

open F, "gunzip -c $filename |";
    my $tar = Archive::Tar->new(*F);
    ...

Similarly, if the C<compress> program is available, you can use this to
write a C<.tar.Z> file

use strict;
    use warnings;
    use Archive::Tar;
    use IO::File;

my $fh = new IO::File "| compress -c >$filename";
    my $tar = Archive::Tar->new();
    ...
    $tar->write($fh);
    $fh->close ;

=head2 How do I recompress using a different compression?

This is easier that you might expect if you realise that all the
C<IO::Compress::*> objects are derived from C<IO::File> and that all the
C<IO::Uncompress::*> modules can read from an C<IO::File> filehandle.

So, for example, say you have a file compressed with gzip that you want to
recompress with bzip2. Here is all that is needed to carry out the
recompression.

use IO::Uncompress::Gunzip ':all';
    use IO::Compress::Bzip2 ':all';

my $gzipFile = "somefile.gz";
    my $bzipFile = "somefile.bz2";

my $gunzip = new IO::Uncompress::Gunzip $gzipFile
        or die "Cannot gunzip $gzipFile: $GunzipError\n" ;

bzip2 $gunzip => $bzipFile
        or die "Cannot bzip2 to $bzipFile: $Bzip2Error\n" ;

Note, there is a limitation of this technique. Some compression file
formats store extra information along with the compressed data payload. For
example, gzip can optionally store the original filename and Zip stores a
lot of information about the original file. If the original compressed file
contains any of this extra information, it will not be transferred to the
new compressed file using the technique above.

=head1 ZIP

=head2 What Compression Types do IO::Compress::Zip & IO::Uncompress::Unzip support?

The following compression formats are supported by C<IO::Compress::Zip> and
C<IO::Uncompress::Unzip>

=over 5

=item * Store (method 0)

No compression at all.

=item * Deflate (method 8)

This is the default compression used when creating a zip file with
C<IO::Compress::Zip>.

=item * Bzip2 (method 12)

Only supported if the C<IO-Compress-Bzip2> module is installed.

=item * Lzma (method 14)

Only supported if the C<IO-Compress-Lzma> module is installed.

=back

=head2 Can I Read/Write Zip files larger the 4 Gig?

Yes, both the C<IO-Compress-Zip> and C<IO-Uncompress-Unzip>  modules
support the zip feature called I<Zip64>. That allows them to read/write
files/buffers larger than 4Gig.

If you are creating a Zip file using the one-shot interface, and any of the
input files is greater than 4Gig, a zip64 complaint zip file will be
created.

zip "really-large-file" => "my.zip";

Similarly with the one-shot interface, if the input is a buffer larger than
4 Gig, a zip64 complaint zip file will be created.

zip \$really_large_buffer => "my.zip";

The one-shot interface allows you to force the creation of a zip64 zip file
by including the C<Zip64> option.

zip $filehandle => "my.zip", Zip64 => 1;

If you want to create a zip64 zip file with the OO interface you must
specify the C<Zip64> option.

my $zip = new IO::Compress::Zip "whatever", Zip64 => 1;
	
When uncompressing with C<IO-Uncompress-Unzip>, it will automatically
detect if the zip file is zip64.

If you intend to manipulate the Zip64 zip files created with
C<IO-Compress-Zip> using an external zip/unzip, make sure that it supports
Zip64.

In particular, if you are using Info-Zip you need to have zip version 3.x
or better to update a Zip64 archive and unzip version 6.x to read a zip64
archive.

=head2 Can I write more that 64K entries is a Zip files?

Yes. Zip64 allows this. See previous question.

=head2 Zip Resources

The primary reference for zip files is the "appnote" document available at
L<http://www.pkware.com/documents/casestudies/APPNOTE.TXT>

An alternatively is the Info-Zip appnote. This is available from
L<ftp://ftp.info-zip.org/pub/infozip/doc/>

=head1 GZIP

=head2 Gzip Resources

The primary reference for gzip files is RFC 1952
L<http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1952.html>

The primary site for gzip is L<http://www.gzip.org>.

=head2 Dealing with concatenated gzip files

If the gunzip program encounters a file containing multiple gzip files
concatenated together it will automatically uncompress them all.
The example below illustrates this behaviour

$ echo abc | gzip -c >x.gz
    $ echo def | gzip -c >>x.gz
    $ gunzip -c x.gz
    abc
    def

By default C<IO::Uncompress::Gunzip> will I<not> behave like the gunzip
program. It will only uncompress the first gzip data stream in the file, as
shown below

$ perl -MIO::Uncompress::Gunzip=:all -e 'gunzip "x.gz" => \*STDOUT'
    abc

To force C<IO::Uncompress::Gunzip> to uncompress all the gzip data streams,
include the C<MultiStream> option, as shown below

$ perl -MIO::Uncompress::Gunzip=:all -e 'gunzip "x.gz" => \*STDOUT, MultiStream => 1'
    abc
    def

=head2 Reading bgzip files with IO::Uncompress::Gunzip

A C<bgzip> file consists of a series of valid gzip-compliant data streams
concatenated together. To read a file created by C<bgzip> with
C<IO::Uncompress::Gunzip> use the C<MultiStream> option as shown in the
previous section.

See the section titled "The BGZF compression format" in
L<http://samtools.github.io/hts-specs/SAMv1.pdf> for a definition of
C<bgzip>.

=head1 ZLIB

=head2 Zlib Resources

The primary site for the I<zlib> compression library is
L<http://www.zlib.org>.

=head1 Bzip2

=head2 Bzip2 Resources

The primary site for bzip2 is L<http://www.bzip.org>.

=head2 Dealing with Concatenated bzip2 files

If the bunzip2 program encounters a file containing multiple bzip2 files
concatenated together it will automatically uncompress them all.
The example below illustrates this behaviour

$ echo abc | bzip2 -c >x.bz2
    $ echo def | bzip2 -c >>x.bz2
    $ bunzip2 -c x.bz2
    abc
    def

By default C<IO::Uncompress::Bunzip2> will I<not> behave like the bunzip2
program. It will only uncompress the first bunzip2 data stream in the file, as
shown below

$ perl -MIO::Uncompress::Bunzip2=:all -e 'bunzip2 "x.bz2" => \*STDOUT'
    abc

To force C<IO::Uncompress::Bunzip2> to uncompress all the bzip2 data streams,
include the C<MultiStream> option, as shown below

$ perl -MIO::Uncompress::Bunzip2=:all -e 'bunzip2 "x.bz2" => \*STDOUT, MultiStream => 1'
    abc
    def

=head2 Interoperating with Pbzip2

Pbzip2 (L<http://compression.ca/pbzip2/>) is a parallel implementation of
bzip2. The output from pbzip2 consists of a series of concatenated bzip2
data streams.

By default C<IO::Uncompress::Bzip2> will only uncompress the first bzip2
data stream in a pbzip2 file. To uncompress the complete pbzip2 file you
must include the C<MultiStream> option, like this.

bunzip2 $input => \$output, MultiStream => 1
        or die "bunzip2 failed: $Bunzip2Error\n";

=head1 HTTP & NETWORK

=head2 Apache::GZip Revisited

Below is a mod_perl Apache compression module, called C<Apache::GZip>,
taken from
L<http://perl.apache.org/docs/tutorials/tips/mod_perl_tricks/mod_perl_tricks.html#On_the_Fly_Compression>

package Apache::GZip;
  #File: Apache::GZip.pm
  
  use strict vars;
  use Apache::Constants ':common';
  use Compress::Zlib;
  use IO::File;
  use constant GZIP_MAGIC => 0x1f8b;
  use constant OS_MAGIC => 0x03;
  
  sub handler {
      my $r = shift;
      my ($fh,$gz);
      my $file = $r->filename;
      return DECLINED unless $fh=IO::File->new($file);
      $r->header_out('Content-Encoding'=>'gzip');
      $r->send_http_header;
      return OK if $r->header_only;
  
      tie *STDOUT,'Apache::GZip',$r;
      print($_) while <$fh>;
      untie *STDOUT;
      return OK;
  }
  
  sub TIEHANDLE {
      my($class,$r) = @_;
      # initialize a deflation stream
      my $d = deflateInit(-WindowBits=>-MAX_WBITS()) || return undef;
  
      # gzip header -- don't ask how I found out
      $r->print(pack("nccVcc",GZIP_MAGIC,Z_DEFLATED,0,time(),0,OS_MAGIC));
  
      return bless { r   => $r,
                     crc =>  crc32(undef),
                     d   => $d,
                     l   =>  0
                   },$class;
  }
  
  sub PRINT {
      my $self = shift;
      foreach (@_) {
        # deflate the data
        my $data = $self->{d}->deflate($_);
        $self->{r}->print($data);
        # keep track of its length and crc
        $self->{l} += length($_);
        $self->{crc} = crc32($_,$self->{crc});
      }
  }
  
  sub DESTROY {
     my $self = shift;
     
     # flush the output buffers
     my $data = $self->{d}->flush;
     $self->{r}->print($data);
     
     # print the CRC and the total length (uncompressed)
     $self->{r}->print(pack("LL",@{$self}{qw/crc l/}));
  }
   
  1;

Here's the Apache configuration entry you'll need to make use of it.  Once
set it will result in everything in the /compressed directory will be
compressed automagically.

<Location /compressed>
     SetHandler  perl-script
     PerlHandler Apache::GZip
  </Location>

Although at first sight there seems to be quite a lot going on in
C<Apache::GZip>, you could sum up what the code was doing as follows --
read the contents of the file in C<< $r->filename >>, compress it and write
the compressed data to standard output. That's all.

This code has to jump through a few hoops to achieve this because

=over

=item 1.

The gzip support in C<Compress::Zlib> version 1.x can only work with a real
filesystem filehandle. The filehandles used by Apache modules are not
associated with the filesystem.

=item 2.

That means all the gzip support has to be done by hand - in this case by
creating a tied filehandle to deal with creating the gzip header and
trailer.

=back

C<IO::Compress::Gzip> doesn't have that filehandle limitation (this was one
of the reasons for writing it in the first place). So if
C<IO::Compress::Gzip> is used instead of C<Compress::Zlib> the whole tied
filehandle code can be removed. Here is the rewritten code.

package Apache::GZip;
  
  use strict vars;
  use Apache::Constants ':common';
  use IO::Compress::Gzip;
  use IO::File;
  
  sub handler {
      my $r = shift;
      my ($fh,$gz);
      my $file = $r->filename;
      return DECLINED unless $fh=IO::File->new($file);
      $r->header_out('Content-Encoding'=>'gzip');
      $r->send_http_header;
      return OK if $r->header_only;

my $gz = new IO::Compress::Gzip '-', Minimal => 1
          or return DECLINED ;

print $gz $_ while <$fh>;
  
      return OK;
  }
  
or even more succinctly, like this, using a one-shot gzip

package Apache::GZip;
  
  use strict vars;
  use Apache::Constants ':common';
  use IO::Compress::Gzip qw(gzip);
  
  sub handler {
      my $r = shift;
      $r->header_out('Content-Encoding'=>'gzip');
      $r->send_http_header;
      return OK if $r->header_only;

gzip $r->filename => '-', Minimal => 1
        or return DECLINED ;

return OK;
  }
   
  1;

The use of one-shot C<gzip> above just reads from C<< $r->filename >> and
writes the compressed data to standard output.

Note the use of the C<Minimal> option in the code above. When using gzip
for Content-Encoding you should I<always> use this option. In the example
above it will prevent the filename being included in the gzip header and
make the size of the gzip data stream a slight bit smaller.

=head2 Compressed files and Net::FTP

The C<Net::FTP> module provides two low-level methods called C<stor> and
C<retr> that both return filehandles. These filehandles can used with the
C<IO::Compress/Uncompress> modules to compress or uncompress files read
from or written to an FTP Server on the fly, without having to create a
temporary file.

Firstly, here is code that uses C<retr> to uncompressed a file as it is
read from the FTP Server.

use Net::FTP;
    use IO::Uncompress::Gunzip qw(:all);

my $ftp = new Net::FTP ...

my $retr_fh = $ftp->retr($compressed_filename);
    gunzip $retr_fh => $outFilename, AutoClose => 1
        or die "Cannot uncompress '$compressed_file': $GunzipError\n";

and this to compress a file as it is written to the FTP Server

use Net::FTP;
    use IO::Compress::Gzip qw(:all);

my $stor_fh = $ftp->stor($filename);
    gzip "filename" => $stor_fh, AutoClose => 1
        or die "Cannot compress '$filename': $GzipError\n";

=head1 MISC

=head2 Using C<InputLength> to uncompress data embedded in a larger file/buffer.

A fairly common use-case is where compressed data is embedded in a larger
file/buffer and you want to read both.

As an example consider the structure of a zip file. This is a well-defined
file format that mixes both compressed and uncompressed sections of data in
a single file.

For the purposes of this discussion you can think of a zip file as sequence
of compressed data streams, each of which is prefixed by an uncompressed
local header. The local header contains information about the compressed
data stream, including the name of the compressed file and, in particular,
the length of the compressed data stream.

To illustrate how to use C<InputLength> here is a script that walks a zip
file and prints out how many lines are in each compressed file (if you
intend write code to walking through a zip file for real see
L<IO::Uncompress::Unzip/"Walking through a zip file"> ). Also, although
this example uses the zlib-based compression, the technique can be used by
the other C<IO::Uncompress::*> modules.

use strict;
    use warnings;

use IO::File;
    use IO::Uncompress::RawInflate qw(:all);

use constant ZIP_LOCAL_HDR_SIG  => 0x04034b50;
    use constant ZIP_LOCAL_HDR_LENGTH => 30;

my $file = $ARGV[0] ;

my $fh = new IO::File "<$file"
                or die "Cannot open '$file': $!\n";

while (1)
    {
        my $sig;
        my $buffer;

my $x ;
        ($x = $fh->read($buffer, ZIP_LOCAL_HDR_LENGTH)) == ZIP_LOCAL_HDR_LENGTH
            or die "Truncated file: $!\n";

my $signature = unpack ("V", substr($buffer, 0, 4));

last unless $signature == ZIP_LOCAL_HDR_SIG;

# Read Local Header
        my $gpFlag             = unpack ("v", substr($buffer, 6, 2));
        my $compressedMethod   = unpack ("v", substr($buffer, 8, 2));
        my $compressedLength   = unpack ("V", substr($buffer, 18, 4));
        my $uncompressedLength = unpack ("V", substr($buffer, 22, 4));
        my $filename_length    = unpack ("v", substr($buffer, 26, 2));
        my $extra_length       = unpack ("v", substr($buffer, 28, 2));

my $filename ;
        $fh->read($filename, $filename_length) == $filename_length
            or die "Truncated file\n";

$fh->read($buffer, $extra_length) == $extra_length
            or die "Truncated file\n";

if ($compressedMethod != 8 && $compressedMethod != 0)
        {
            warn "Skipping file '$filename' - not deflated $compressedMethod\n";
            $fh->read($buffer, $compressedLength) == $compressedLength
                or die "Truncated file\n";
            next;
        }

if ($compressedMethod == 0 && $gpFlag & 8 == 8)
        {
            die "Streamed Stored not supported for '$filename'\n";
        }

next if $compressedLength == 0;

# Done reading the Local Header

my $inf = new IO::Uncompress::RawInflate $fh,
                            Transparent => 1,
                            InputLength => $compressedLength
          or die "Cannot uncompress $file [$filename]: $RawInflateError\n"  ;

my $line_count = 0;

while (<$inf>)
        {
            ++ $line_count;
        }

print "$filename: $line_count\n";
    }

The majority of the code above is concerned with reading the zip local
header data. The code that I want to focus on is at the bottom.

while (1) {
    
        # read local zip header data
        # get $filename
        # get $compressedLength

my $inf = new IO::Uncompress::RawInflate $fh,
                            Transparent => 1,
                            InputLength => $compressedLength
          or die "Cannot uncompress $file [$filename]: $RawInflateError\n"  ;

my $line_count = 0;

while (<$inf>)
        {
            ++ $line_count;
        }

print "$filename: $line_count\n";
    }

The call to C<IO::Uncompress::RawInflate> creates a new filehandle C<$inf>
that can be used to read from the parent filehandle C<$fh>, uncompressing
it as it goes. The use of the C<InputLength> option will guarantee that
I<at most> C<$compressedLength> bytes of compressed data will be read from
the C<$fh> filehandle (The only exception is for an error case like a
truncated file or a corrupt data stream).

This means that once RawInflate is finished C<$fh> will be left at the
byte directly after the compressed data stream.

Now consider what the code looks like without C<InputLength>

while (1) {
    
        # read local zip header data
        # get $filename
        # get $compressedLength

# read all the compressed data into $data
        read($fh, $data, $compressedLength);

my $inf = new IO::Uncompress::RawInflate \$data,
                            Transparent => 1,
          or die "Cannot uncompress $file [$filename]: $RawInflateError\n"  ;

my $line_count = 0;

while (<$inf>)
        {
            ++ $line_count;
        }

print "$filename: $line_count\n";
    }

The difference here is the addition of the temporary variable C<$data>.
This is used to store a copy of the compressed data while it is being
uncompressed.

If you know that C<$compressedLength> isn't that big then using temporary
storage won't be a problem. But if C<$compressedLength> is very large or
you are writing an application that other people will use, and so have no
idea how big C<$compressedLength> will be, it could be an issue.

Using C<InputLength> avoids the use of temporary storage and means the
application can cope with large compressed data streams.

One final point -- obviously C<InputLength> can only be used whenever you
know the length of the compressed data beforehand, like here with a zip
file.

=head1 SEE ALSO

L<Compress::Zlib>, L<IO::Compress::Gzip>, L<IO::Uncompress::Gunzip>, L<IO::Compress::Deflate>, L<IO::Uncompress::Inflate>, L<IO::Compress::RawDeflate>, L<IO::Uncompress::RawInflate>, L<IO::Compress::Bzip2>, L<IO::Uncompress::Bunzip2>, L<IO::Compress::Lzma>, L<IO::Uncompress::UnLzma>, L<IO::Compress::Xz>, L<IO::Uncompress::UnXz>, L<IO::Compress::Lzop>, L<IO::Uncompress::UnLzop>, L<IO::Compress::Lzf>, L<IO::Uncompress::UnLzf>, L<IO::Uncompress::AnyInflate>, L<IO::Uncompress::AnyUncompress>

L<IO::Compress::FAQ|IO::Compress::FAQ>

L<File::GlobMapper|File::GlobMapper>, L<Archive::Zip|Archive::Zip>,
L<Archive::Tar|Archive::Tar>,
L<IO::Zlib|IO::Zlib>

=head1 AUTHOR

This module was written by Paul Marquess, C<pmqs@cpan.org>.

=head1 MODIFICATION HISTORY

See the Changes file.

=head1 COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

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Name	Type	Size	Permission	Last Modified	Actions
.	DIR	-	drwxr-xr-x	2026-06-29 09:01:31
..	DIR	-	drwxr-xr-x	2026-06-29 03:15:53
Adapter	DIR	-	drwxr-xr-x	2026-06-29 09:01:31
Base	DIR	-	drwxr-xr-x	2026-06-29 09:01:31
Gzip	DIR	-	drwxr-xr-x	2026-06-29 09:01:31
Zip	DIR	-	drwxr-xr-x	2026-06-29 09:01:31
Zlib	DIR	-	drwxr-xr-x	2026-06-29 09:01:31
Base.pm	text/plain	23.11 KB	-rw-r--r--	2018-04-05 10:41:37
Bzip2.pm	text/plain	19.71 KB	-rw-r--r--	2018-04-05 10:18:34
Deflate.pm	text/plain	23.02 KB	-rw-r--r--	2018-04-05 10:18:34
FAQ.pod	text/plain	20.25 KB	-rw-r--r--	2018-04-04 08:22:25
Gzip.pm	text/plain	33.27 KB	-rw-r--r--	2018-04-05 10:18:34
RawDeflate.pm	text/plain	25.2 KB	-rw-r--r--	2018-04-05 10:18:34
Zip.pm	text/plain	57.19 KB	-rw-r--r--	2018-04-05 10:18:34