zlib

File Format
Name	zlib
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Compression zlib
Released	1995

zlib format is a variant of the DEFLATE compressed data format. It adds a lightweight container, a small amount of configurability, and error checking.

zlib is also the name of a software library that supports the zlib format, and other formats related to DEFLATE.

There are many formats and protocols that use, or may use, zlib format. A notable example is PNG.

See also

• Adler-32
• DEFLATE

Identification

The first two bytes can help to identify a zlib datastream. The following tests are ordered from most reliable to least reliable.

• If the first two bytes are interpreted as a big-endian integer, it is always a multiple of 31. (Always true)
• The first byte has eight possible values: 0x08, 0x18, 0x28, ..., 0x78. (Always true, unless the zlib format has been extended to support compression methods other than Deflate.)
• The 0x20 bit of the second byte is 0. (A value of 1 is legal in zlib v3.3+, but indicates use of a preset dictionary, so the zlib stream is not portable.)
• The first byte is exactly 0x78. (Any other value from the list above means the Deflate decompressor can use a window size less than the standard 32K. The extent to which this feature has been used is unclear.)

Specifications

• ZLIB Specification v3.1 - No copy found. There are dead links to it in e.g. the zlib 0.95 README file.
• ZLIB Specification v3.2 (from archive.org)
• RFC 1950: ZLIB Compressed Data Format Specification version 3.3

Software

• zlib data compression library
• CloudFlare fork of zlib
• zlib-ng
• Puff - Lightweight decompression software included with zlib (contrib/puff)
• miniz
• zopfli - zlib compressor highly optimized for file size
• Offzip
• Deark

See also DEFLATE#Software.

Links

• Wikipedia article