"Linux Gazette...making Linux just a little more fun!"

The Answer Guy

By James T. Dennis, answerguy@ssc.com
Starshine Technical Services, http://www.starshine.org/

Compression Libraries to Link into a C Program

From Corne van Biljon on the linuxprog mailing list on 30 May 1998

Hello

I would like to zip a file, specified by the user, from within a C program. Currently I use the system() command to invoke gzip. Is there a compression library or routines out there somewhere, or is there a better way of doing this ?

Thanks

I can understand your concerns.

The system(), and popen() calls are notoriously insecure and can be used to subvert your program to the users' will.

I would have started with some Yahoo! and Alta Vista searches (actually I used Google --- a new and interesting search engine at Stanford University: http://google.stanford.edu/).

The obvious phrase would be "+free +compression +library" (and reasonable variations).

I get a bunch of links to the PKware Inc. pages (which are presumably shareware and/or commercial) and then I find a link to the zlib pages (which declare that they should not be confused with the Linux zlibc compression libraries).

The zlib home pages are at:

http://www.cdrom.com/pub/infozip/zlib/

... and appear to be gzip compatible, and co-written by the primary author/maintainer of gzip. However the impression I got from this page is that zlib is not under a GPL or is under an LGPL --- that your zlib linked code will not be encumbered.

Naturally you'll want to read the licenses yourself.

This zlib home page also has numerous links to other compresssion software and programming resources.

Copyright © 1998, James T. Dennis
Published in Linux Gazette Issue 30 July 1998

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