Zlib
Provides a free, patent-unencumbered, general-purpose library for lossless data compression. Offers a portable format for use across diverse hardware and OS.
zlib is a free, general-purpose, lossless data-compression library designed for use on virtually any computer hardware and operating system. It is legally unencumbered by patents, meaning it's free from patent restrictions. The zlib data format itself is also portable across platforms.
Unlike the LZW compression method (used in Unix compress and GIF), the 'deflate' method used in zlib essentially never expands the data. Its memory footprint is independent of the input data and can be adjusted if needed, potentially at the cost of some compression efficiency.
Key aspects:
- Free and Unencumbered: No patent restrictions.
- Portable: Works across many hardware and OS platforms, with a portable data format.
- Reliable Compression: Uses the 'deflate' algorithm, known from gzip and Zip, which avoids data expansion issues found in older methods like LZW.
- Configurable Memory: Memory usage can be controlled.
Written by Jean-loup Gailly (compression) and Mark Adler (decompression). The library is widely used and forms an integral part of many systems and applications, including Linux and Java (since JDK 1.1). The current release is zlib 1.3.1 (as of Jan 2024).
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