up vote 3 down vote favorite

I have created zlib-compressed data in Python, like this:

import zlib
s = '...'
z = zlib.compress(s)
with open('/tmp/data', 'w') as f:
    f.write(z)

(or one-liner in shell: echo -n '...' | python2 -c 'import sys,zlib; sys.stdout.write(zlib.compress(sys.stdin.read()))' > /tmp/data)

Now, I want to uncompress the data in shell. Neither zcat nor uncompress work:

$ cat /tmp/data | gzip -d -
gzip: stdin: not in gzip format

$ zcat /tmp/data 
gzip: /tmp/data.gz: not in gzip format

$ cat /tmp/data | uncompress -
gzip: stdin: not in gzip format

It seems that i have created gzip-like file, but without any headers.. unfortunately i don's see any option to uncompress such raw data in gzip man page.. and zlib package does not contain any executable utility..

Is there an utility to uncompress raw zlib data?

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migrated from stackoverflow.com Oct 18 '11 at 8:48

4 Answers

up vote 8 down vote

zlib implements the compression used by gzip, but not the file format. Instead, you should use the gzip module, which itself uses zlib.

import gzip
s = '...'
with gzip.open('/tmp/data', 'w') as f:
    f.write(s)
share|improve this answer
ok, but my situation is that i have tens/hundreds thousands of those files created, so.. :) – mykhal Sep 20 '11 at 22:14
so... your files are incomplete. Perhaps you'll have to uncompress them with zlib and recompress them with gzip, if you don't still have the original data. – Greg Hewgill Sep 20 '11 at 22:18
3  
@mykhal, why did you create ten/hundred thousands of files before checking that you could actually uncompress them? – Harpyon Sep 20 '11 at 22:19
harpyon, i can uncompress them, i just wonder which less or more common urility or zgip settings can be used for that, if i don't want to do it in python again – mykhal Sep 20 '11 at 22:47
up vote 7 down vote

It is also possible to decomress using standard shell script + gunzip

printf "\x1f\x8b\x08\x00\x00\x00\x00\x00" |cat - zlib.raw |gzip -dc
share|improve this answer
.. only if one has that zlib.raw :) – mykhal Sep 25 '12 at 11:36
which package is that utility from? – mykhal Sep 25 '12 at 12:22
@mykhal I'm pretty sure zlib.raw in that example is your compressed file. – derobert Sep 25 '12 at 16:36
@derobert oops, sure :) i was seeing additional |, which isn't there.. – mykhal Sep 25 '12 at 18:02
nice! this did the trick. I had some logs compressed in python. – Vitaly Kushner Dec 11 '12 at 9:59
up vote 5 down vote accepted

I have found a solution (one of the possible ones), it's using openssl:

$ cat /tmp/data | openssl zlib -d
...

NOTE: the zlib functionality is apparently available in recent openssl versions >=1.0.0

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1  
On Debian Squeeze (which has OpenSSL 0.9.8) there is zlib-flate in the qpdf package. It can be used like zlib-flate -uncompress < FILE. – Tino Sep 16 '12 at 14:09
up vote 1 down vote

This might do it:

import glob
import zlib
import sys

for filename in sys.argv:
    with open(filename, 'r') as compressed:
        with open(filename + "-decompressed', 'w') as expanded:
        data = zlib.decompress(compressed.read())
        expanded.write(data)

$ python expander.py data/*
share|improve this answer
thanks, i know about zlib.decompress. probably i'd use some walk function. i'm not sure if shell would handle my huge amount of files with glob wildcard :) – mykhal Sep 20 '11 at 22:28

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