What is "zlib"

zlib is a library (current version: 1.2.8, released on April 28, 2013) that is widely used for data compression. It is open source software written in c, and is patent-free. It supports three major compression formats:

• Format deflate (compressed data).
• Format zlib (essentially only raw data with a small header).
• Format gzip (raw data with a considerably more sophisticated header).

The documentation can be found at RFC-1950 (zlib), RFC-1951 (deflate), and RFC-1952 (gzip).

The zlib library was created by Jean-Loup Gailly and Mark Adler.