Data Compression and Archiving

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

• The compression package
• compression.zstd Compression compatible with the Zstandard format
  • Exceptions
  • Reading and writing compressed files
  • Compressing and decompressing data in memory
  • Zstandard dictionaries
  • Advanced parameter control
  • Miscellaneous
  • Examples
• zlib Compression compatible with gzip
• gzip Support for gzip files
  • Examples of usage
  • Command-line interface
    • Command-line options
• bz2 Support for bzip2 compression
  • (De)compression of files
  • Incremental (de)compression
  • One-shot (de)compression
  • Examples of usage
• lzma Compression using the LZMA algorithm
  • Reading and writing compressed files
  • Compressing and decompressing data in memory
  • Miscellaneous
  • Specifying custom filter chains
  • Constants
  • Examples
• zipfile Work with ZIP archives
  • ZipFile objects
  • Path objects
  • PyZipFile objects
  • ZipInfo objects
  • Command-line interface
    • Command-line options
  • Decompression pitfalls
    • From file itself
    • File system limitations
    • Resources limitations
    • Interruption
    • Default behaviors of extraction
• tarfile Read and write tar archive files
  • TarFile Objects
  • TarInfo Objects
  • Extraction filters
    • Default named filters
    • Filter errors
    • Hints for further verification
    • Supporting older Python versions
    • Stateful extraction filter example
  • Command-Line Interface
    • Command-line options
  • Examples
    • Reading examples
    • Writing examples
  • Supported tar formats
  • Unicode issues