13. Data Compression and Archiving

The modules described in this chapter support data compression with the zlib, gzip, bzip2 and lzma algorithms, and the creation of ZIP- and tar-format archives. See also Archiving operations provided by the shutil module.

• 13.1. zlib — Compression compatible with gzip
• 13.2. gzip — Support for gzip files
  • 13.2.1. Examples of usage
• 13.3. bz2 — Support for bzip2 compression
  • 13.3.1. (De)compression of files
  • 13.3.2. Incremental (de)compression
  • 13.3.3. One-shot (de)compression
• 13.4. lzma — Compression using the LZMA algorithm
  • 13.4.1. Reading and writing compressed files
  • 13.4.2. Compressing and decompressing data in memory
  • 13.4.3. Miscellaneous
  • 13.4.4. Specifying custom filter chains
  • 13.4.5. Examples
• 13.5. zipfile — Work with ZIP archives
  • 13.5.1. ZipFile Objects
  • 13.5.2. PyZipFile Objects
  • 13.5.3. ZipInfo Objects
  • 13.5.4. Command-Line Interface
    • 13.5.4.1. Command-line options
  • 13.5.5. Decompression pitfalls
    • 13.5.5.1. From file itself
    • 13.5.5.2. File System limitations
    • 13.5.5.3. Resources limitations
    • 13.5.5.4. Interruption
    • 13.5.5.5. Default behaviors of extraction
• 13.6. tarfile — Read and write tar archive files
  • 13.6.1. TarFile Objects
  • 13.6.2. TarInfo Objects
  • 13.6.3. Command-Line Interface
    • 13.6.3.1. Command-line options
  • 13.6.4. Examples
  • 13.6.5. Supported tar formats
  • 13.6.6. Unicode issues