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675 lines
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675 lines
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Network Working Group P. Deutsch
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Request for Comments: 1952 Aladdin Enterprises
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Category: Informational May 1996
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GZIP file format specification version 4.3
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Status of This Memo
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This memo provides information for the Internet community. This memo
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does not specify an Internet standard of any kind. Distribution of
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this memo is unlimited.
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IESG Note:
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The IESG takes no position on the validity of any Intellectual
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Property Rights statements contained in this document.
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Notices
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Copyright (c) 1996 L. Peter Deutsch
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Permission is granted to copy and distribute this document for any
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purpose and without charge, including translations into other
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languages and incorporation into compilations, provided that the
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copyright notice and this notice are preserved, and that any
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substantive changes or deletions from the original are clearly
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marked.
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A pointer to the latest version of this and related documentation in
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HTML format can be found at the URL
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<ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/png/documents/zlib/zdoc-index.html>.
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Abstract
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This specification defines a lossless compressed data format that is
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compatible with the widely used GZIP utility. The format includes a
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cyclic redundancy check value for detecting data corruption. The
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format presently uses the DEFLATE method of compression but can be
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easily extended to use other compression methods. The format can be
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implemented readily in a manner not covered by patents.
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Deutsch Informational [Page 1]
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RFC 1952 GZIP File Format Specification May 1996
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Table of Contents
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1. Introduction ................................................... 2
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1.1. Purpose ................................................... 2
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1.2. Intended audience ......................................... 3
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1.3. Scope ..................................................... 3
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1.4. Compliance ................................................ 3
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1.5. Definitions of terms and conventions used ................. 3
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1.6. Changes from previous versions ............................ 3
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2. Detailed specification ......................................... 4
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2.1. Overall conventions ....................................... 4
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2.2. File format ............................................... 5
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2.3. Member format ............................................. 5
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2.3.1. Member header and trailer ........................... 6
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2.3.1.1. Extra field ................................... 8
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2.3.1.2. Compliance .................................... 9
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3. References .................................................. 9
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4. Security Considerations .................................... 10
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5. Acknowledgements ........................................... 10
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6. Author's Address ........................................... 10
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7. Appendix: Jean-Loup Gailly's gzip utility .................. 11
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8. Appendix: Sample CRC Code .................................. 11
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1. Introduction
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1.1. Purpose
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The purpose of this specification is to define a lossless
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compressed data format that:
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* Is independent of CPU type, operating system, file system,
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and character set, and hence can be used for interchange;
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* Can compress or decompress a data stream (as opposed to a
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randomly accessible file) to produce another data stream,
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using only an a priori bounded amount of intermediate
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storage, and hence can be used in data communications or
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similar structures such as Unix filters;
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* Compresses data with efficiency comparable to the best
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currently available general-purpose compression methods,
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and in particular considerably better than the "compress"
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program;
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* Can be implemented readily in a manner not covered by
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patents, and hence can be practiced freely;
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* Is compatible with the file format produced by the current
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widely used gzip utility, in that conforming decompressors
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will be able to read data produced by the existing gzip
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compressor.
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Deutsch Informational [Page 2]
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RFC 1952 GZIP File Format Specification May 1996
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The data format defined by this specification does not attempt to:
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* Provide random access to compressed data;
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* Compress specialized data (e.g., raster graphics) as well as
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the best currently available specialized algorithms.
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1.2. Intended audience
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This specification is intended for use by implementors of software
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to compress data into gzip format and/or decompress data from gzip
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format.
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The text of the specification assumes a basic background in
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programming at the level of bits and other primitive data
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representations.
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1.3. Scope
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The specification specifies a compression method and a file format
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(the latter assuming only that a file can store a sequence of
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arbitrary bytes). It does not specify any particular interface to
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a file system or anything about character sets or encodings
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(except for file names and comments, which are optional).
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1.4. Compliance
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Unless otherwise indicated below, a compliant decompressor must be
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able to accept and decompress any file that conforms to all the
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specifications presented here; a compliant compressor must produce
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files that conform to all the specifications presented here. The
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material in the appendices is not part of the specification per se
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and is not relevant to compliance.
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1.5. Definitions of terms and conventions used
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byte: 8 bits stored or transmitted as a unit (same as an octet).
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(For this specification, a byte is exactly 8 bits, even on
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machines which store a character on a number of bits different
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from 8.) See below for the numbering of bits within a byte.
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1.6. Changes from previous versions
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There have been no technical changes to the gzip format since
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version 4.1 of this specification. In version 4.2, some
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terminology was changed, and the sample CRC code was rewritten for
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clarity and to eliminate the requirement for the caller to do pre-
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and post-conditioning. Version 4.3 is a conversion of the
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specification to RFC style.
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Deutsch Informational [Page 3]
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RFC 1952 GZIP File Format Specification May 1996
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2. Detailed specification
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2.1. Overall conventions
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In the diagrams below, a box like this:
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+---+
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| | <-- the vertical bars might be missing
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+---+
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represents one byte; a box like this:
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+==============+
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+==============+
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represents a variable number of bytes.
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Bytes stored within a computer do not have a "bit order", since
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they are always treated as a unit. However, a byte considered as
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an integer between 0 and 255 does have a most- and least-
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significant bit, and since we write numbers with the most-
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significant digit on the left, we also write bytes with the most-
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significant bit on the left. In the diagrams below, we number the
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bits of a byte so that bit 0 is the least-significant bit, i.e.,
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the bits are numbered:
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+--------+
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|76543210|
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+--------+
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This document does not address the issue of the order in which
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bits of a byte are transmitted on a bit-sequential medium, since
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the data format described here is byte- rather than bit-oriented.
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Within a computer, a number may occupy multiple bytes. All
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multi-byte numbers in the format described here are stored with
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the least-significant byte first (at the lower memory address).
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For example, the decimal number 520 is stored as:
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0 1
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+--------+--------+
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|00001000|00000010|
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+--------+--------+
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^ ^
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| + more significant byte = 2 x 256
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+ less significant byte = 8
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Deutsch Informational [Page 4]
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RFC 1952 GZIP File Format Specification May 1996
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2.2. File format
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A gzip file consists of a series of "members" (compressed data
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sets). The format of each member is specified in the following
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section. The members simply appear one after another in the file,
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with no additional information before, between, or after them.
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2.3. Member format
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Each member has the following structure:
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+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
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|ID1|ID2|CM |FLG| MTIME |XFL|OS | (more-->)
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+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
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(if FLG.FEXTRA set)
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+---+---+=================================+
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| XLEN |...XLEN bytes of "extra field"...| (more-->)
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+---+---+=================================+
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(if FLG.FNAME set)
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+=========================================+
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|...original file name, zero-terminated...| (more-->)
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+=========================================+
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(if FLG.FCOMMENT set)
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+===================================+
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|...file comment, zero-terminated...| (more-->)
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+===================================+
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(if FLG.FHCRC set)
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+---+---+
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| CRC16 |
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+---+---+
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+=======================+
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|...compressed blocks...| (more-->)
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+=======================+
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0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
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| CRC32 | ISIZE |
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+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+
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Deutsch Informational [Page 5]
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RFC 1952 GZIP File Format Specification May 1996
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2.3.1. Member header and trailer
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ID1 (IDentification 1)
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ID2 (IDentification 2)
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These have the fixed values ID1 = 31 (0x1f, \037), ID2 = 139
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(0x8b, \213), to identify the file as being in gzip format.
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CM (Compression Method)
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This identifies the compression method used in the file. CM
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= 0-7 are reserved. CM = 8 denotes the "deflate"
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compression method, which is the one customarily used by
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gzip and which is documented elsewhere.
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FLG (FLaGs)
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This flag byte is divided into individual bits as follows:
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bit 0 FTEXT
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bit 1 FHCRC
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bit 2 FEXTRA
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bit 3 FNAME
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bit 4 FCOMMENT
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bit 5 reserved
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bit 6 reserved
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bit 7 reserved
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If FTEXT is set, the file is probably ASCII text. This is
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an optional indication, which the compressor may set by
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checking a small amount of the input data to see whether any
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non-ASCII characters are present. In case of doubt, FTEXT
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is cleared, indicating binary data. For systems which have
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different file formats for ascii text and binary data, the
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decompressor can use FTEXT to choose the appropriate format.
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We deliberately do not specify the algorithm used to set
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this bit, since a compressor always has the option of
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leaving it cleared and a decompressor always has the option
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of ignoring it and letting some other program handle issues
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of data conversion.
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If FHCRC is set, a CRC16 for the gzip header is present,
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immediately before the compressed data. The CRC16 consists
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of the two least significant bytes of the CRC32 for all
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bytes of the gzip header up to and not including the CRC16.
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[The FHCRC bit was never set by versions of gzip up to
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1.2.4, even though it was documented with a different
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meaning in gzip 1.2.4.]
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If FEXTRA is set, optional extra fields are present, as
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described in a following section.
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Deutsch Informational [Page 6]
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RFC 1952 GZIP File Format Specification May 1996
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If FNAME is set, an original file name is present,
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terminated by a zero byte. The name must consist of ISO
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8859-1 (LATIN-1) characters; on operating systems using
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EBCDIC or any other character set for file names, the name
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must be translated to the ISO LATIN-1 character set. This
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is the original name of the file being compressed, with any
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directory components removed, and, if the file being
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compressed is on a file system with case insensitive names,
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forced to lower case. There is no original file name if the
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data was compressed from a source other than a named file;
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for example, if the source was stdin on a Unix system, there
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is no file name.
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If FCOMMENT is set, a zero-terminated file comment is
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present. This comment is not interpreted; it is only
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intended for human consumption. The comment must consist of
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ISO 8859-1 (LATIN-1) characters. Line breaks should be
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denoted by a single line feed character (10 decimal).
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Reserved FLG bits must be zero.
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MTIME (Modification TIME)
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This gives the most recent modification time of the original
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file being compressed. The time is in Unix format, i.e.,
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seconds since 00:00:00 GMT, Jan. 1, 1970. (Note that this
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may cause problems for MS-DOS and other systems that use
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local rather than Universal time.) If the compressed data
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did not come from a file, MTIME is set to the time at which
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compression started. MTIME = 0 means no time stamp is
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available.
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XFL (eXtra FLags)
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These flags are available for use by specific compression
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methods. The "deflate" method (CM = 8) sets these flags as
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follows:
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XFL = 2 - compressor used maximum compression,
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slowest algorithm
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XFL = 4 - compressor used fastest algorithm
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OS (Operating System)
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This identifies the type of file system on which compression
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took place. This may be useful in determining end-of-line
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convention for text files. The currently defined values are
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as follows:
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Deutsch Informational [Page 7]
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RFC 1952 GZIP File Format Specification May 1996
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0 - FAT filesystem (MS-DOS, OS/2, NT/Win32)
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1 - Amiga
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2 - VMS (or OpenVMS)
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3 - Unix
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4 - VM/CMS
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5 - Atari TOS
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6 - HPFS filesystem (OS/2, NT)
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7 - Macintosh
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8 - Z-System
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9 - CP/M
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10 - TOPS-20
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11 - NTFS filesystem (NT)
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12 - QDOS
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13 - Acorn RISCOS
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255 - unknown
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XLEN (eXtra LENgth)
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If FLG.FEXTRA is set, this gives the length of the optional
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extra field. See below for details.
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CRC32 (CRC-32)
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This contains a Cyclic Redundancy Check value of the
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uncompressed data computed according to CRC-32 algorithm
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used in the ISO 3309 standard and in section 8.1.1.6.2 of
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ITU-T recommendation V.42. (See http://www.iso.ch for
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ordering ISO documents. See gopher://info.itu.ch for an
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online version of ITU-T V.42.)
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ISIZE (Input SIZE)
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This contains the size of the original (uncompressed) input
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data modulo 2^32.
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2.3.1.1. Extra field
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If the FLG.FEXTRA bit is set, an "extra field" is present in
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the header, with total length XLEN bytes. It consists of a
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series of subfields, each of the form:
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+---+---+---+---+==================================+
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|SI1|SI2| LEN |... LEN bytes of subfield data ...|
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+---+---+---+---+==================================+
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SI1 and SI2 provide a subfield ID, typically two ASCII letters
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with some mnemonic value. Jean-Loup Gailly
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<[email protected]> is maintaining a registry of subfield
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IDs; please send him any subfield ID you wish to use. Subfield
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IDs with SI2 = 0 are reserved for future use. The following
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IDs are currently defined:
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Deutsch Informational [Page 8]
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RFC 1952 GZIP File Format Specification May 1996
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SI1 SI2 Data
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---------- ---------- ----
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0x41 ('A') 0x70 ('P') Apollo file type information
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LEN gives the length of the subfield data, excluding the 4
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initial bytes.
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2.3.1.2. Compliance
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A compliant compressor must produce files with correct ID1,
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ID2, CM, CRC32, and ISIZE, but may set all the other fields in
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the fixed-length part of the header to default values (255 for
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OS, 0 for all others). The compressor must set all reserved
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bits to zero.
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A compliant decompressor must check ID1, ID2, and CM, and
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provide an error indication if any of these have incorrect
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values. It must examine FEXTRA/XLEN, FNAME, FCOMMENT and FHCRC
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at least so it can skip over the optional fields if they are
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present. It need not examine any other part of the header or
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trailer; in particular, a decompressor may ignore FTEXT and OS
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and always produce binary output, and still be compliant. A
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compliant decompressor must give an error indication if any
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reserved bit is non-zero, since such a bit could indicate the
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presence of a new field that would cause subsequent data to be
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interpreted incorrectly.
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3. References
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[1] "Information Processing - 8-bit single-byte coded graphic
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character sets - Part 1: Latin alphabet No.1" (ISO 8859-1:1987).
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The ISO 8859-1 (Latin-1) character set is a superset of 7-bit
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ASCII. Files defining this character set are available as
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iso_8859-1.* in ftp://ftp.uu.net/graphics/png/documents/
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[2] ISO 3309
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[3] ITU-T recommendation V.42
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[4] Deutsch, L.P.,"DEFLATE Compressed Data Format Specification",
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available in ftp://ftp.uu.net/pub/archiving/zip/doc/
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[5] Gailly, J.-L., GZIP documentation, available as gzip-*.tar in
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ftp://prep.ai.mit.edu/pub/gnu/
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[6] Sarwate, D.V., "Computation of Cyclic Redundancy Checks via Table
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Look-Up", Communications of the ACM, 31(8), pp.1008-1013.
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Deutsch Informational [Page 9]
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RFC 1952 GZIP File Format Specification May 1996
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[7] Schwaderer, W.D., "CRC Calculation", April 85 PC Tech Journal,
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pp.118-133.
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[8] ftp://ftp.adelaide.edu.au/pub/rocksoft/papers/crc_v3.txt,
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describing the CRC concept.
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4. Security Considerations
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Any data compression method involves the reduction of redundancy in
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the data. Consequently, any corruption of the data is likely to have
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severe effects and be difficult to correct. Uncompressed text, on
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the other hand, will probably still be readable despite the presence
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of some corrupted bytes.
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It is recommended that systems using this data format provide some
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means of validating the integrity of the compressed data, such as by
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setting and checking the CRC-32 check value.
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5. Acknowledgements
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Trademarks cited in this document are the property of their
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respective owners.
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Jean-Loup Gailly designed the gzip format and wrote, with Mark Adler,
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the related software described in this specification. Glenn
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Randers-Pehrson converted this document to RFC and HTML format.
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6. Author's Address
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L. Peter Deutsch
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Aladdin Enterprises
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203 Santa Margarita Ave.
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Menlo Park, CA 94025
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Phone: (415) 322-0103 (AM only)
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FAX: (415) 322-1734
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EMail: <[email protected]>
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Questions about the technical content of this specification can be
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sent by email to:
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Jean-Loup Gailly <[email protected]> and
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Mark Adler <[email protected]>
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|
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Editorial comments on this specification can be sent by email to:
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L. Peter Deutsch <[email protected]> and
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Glenn Randers-Pehrson <[email protected]>
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Deutsch Informational [Page 10]
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RFC 1952 GZIP File Format Specification May 1996
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7. Appendix: Jean-Loup Gailly's gzip utility
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The most widely used implementation of gzip compression, and the
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original documentation on which this specification is based, were
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created by Jean-Loup Gailly <[email protected]>. Since this
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implementation is a de facto standard, we mention some more of its
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features here. Again, the material in this section is not part of
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the specification per se, and implementations need not follow it to
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be compliant.
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When compressing or decompressing a file, gzip preserves the
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protection, ownership, and modification time attributes on the local
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file system, since there is no provision for representing protection
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attributes in the gzip file format itself. Since the file format
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includes a modification time, the gzip decompressor provides a
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command line switch that assigns the modification time from the file,
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rather than the local modification time of the compressed input, to
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the decompressed output.
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8. Appendix: Sample CRC Code
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The following sample code represents a practical implementation of
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the CRC (Cyclic Redundancy Check). (See also ISO 3309 and ITU-T V.42
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for a formal specification.)
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The sample code is in the ANSI C programming language. Non C users
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may find it easier to read with these hints:
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& Bitwise AND operator.
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^ Bitwise exclusive-OR operator.
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>> Bitwise right shift operator. When applied to an
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unsigned quantity, as here, right shift inserts zero
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bit(s) at the left.
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! Logical NOT operator.
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++ "n++" increments the variable n.
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0xNNN 0x introduces a hexadecimal (base 16) constant.
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Suffix L indicates a long value (at least 32 bits).
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/* Table of CRCs of all 8-bit messages. */
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unsigned long crc_table[256];
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/* Flag: has the table been computed? Initially false. */
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int crc_table_computed = 0;
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/* Make the table for a fast CRC. */
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void make_crc_table(void)
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{
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unsigned long c;
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Deutsch Informational [Page 11]
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RFC 1952 GZIP File Format Specification May 1996
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int n, k;
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for (n = 0; n < 256; n++) {
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c = (unsigned long) n;
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for (k = 0; k < 8; k++) {
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if (c & 1) {
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c = 0xedb88320L ^ (c >> 1);
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} else {
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c = c >> 1;
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}
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}
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crc_table[n] = c;
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}
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crc_table_computed = 1;
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}
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/*
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Update a running crc with the bytes buf[0..len-1] and return
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the updated crc. The crc should be initialized to zero. Pre- and
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post-conditioning (one's complement) is performed within this
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function so it shouldn't be done by the caller. Usage example:
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unsigned long crc = 0L;
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while (read_buffer(buffer, length) != EOF) {
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crc = update_crc(crc, buffer, length);
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}
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if (crc != original_crc) error();
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*/
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unsigned long update_crc(unsigned long crc,
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unsigned char *buf, int len)
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{
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unsigned long c = crc ^ 0xffffffffL;
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int n;
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|
|
if (!crc_table_computed)
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make_crc_table();
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for (n = 0; n < len; n++) {
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c = crc_table[(c ^ buf[n]) & 0xff] ^ (c >> 8);
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}
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return c ^ 0xffffffffL;
|
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}
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/* Return the CRC of the bytes buf[0..len-1]. */
|
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unsigned long crc(unsigned char *buf, int len)
|
|
{
|
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return update_crc(0L, buf, len);
|
|
}
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Deutsch Informational [Page 12]
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