gzip Files with Perl ＆ Python

Xah Lee, 2005-08-30

Python

Here is a example of how to decompress a gzip file using Python.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# python

import gzip
inF = gzip.GzipFile("/Users/t/access_log.1.gz", 'rb');
s=inF.read()
inF.close()

outF = file("/Users/t/access_log.1", 'wb');
outF.write(s)
outF.close()

Here is a example of compressing a gzip file using Python.

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# python

import gzip

inF = file("x.txt", 'rb');
s=inF.read()
inF.close()

outF = gzip.GzipFile("x.txt.gz", 'wb');
outF.write(s)
outF.close()

For more detail, see http://python.org/doc/2.4.1/lib/module-gzip.html

Perl

Perl does not come with a gzip module bundled, but one can easily call the unix gzip with qx. (assuming you are on unix)

# -*- coding: utf-8 -*-
# perl

qx(gzip x.txt);
qx(gzip -d x.txt.gz);

Several module are available online to do compression. IO::Zlib, PerlIO::gzip.