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1. Compression algorithm (deflate)
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The deflation algorithm used by gzip (also zip and zlib) is a variation of
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LZ77 (Lempel-Ziv 1977, see reference below). It finds duplicated strings in
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the input data. The second occurrence of a string is replaced by a
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pointer to the previous string, in the form of a pair (distance,
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length). Distances are limited to 32K bytes, and lengths are limited
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to 258 bytes. When a string does not occur anywhere in the previous
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32K bytes, it is emitted as a sequence of literal bytes. (In this
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description, `string' must be taken as an arbitrary sequence of bytes,
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and is not restricted to printable characters.)
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Literals or match lengths are compressed with one Huffman tree, and
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match distances are compressed with another tree. The trees are stored
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in a compact form at the start of each block. The blocks can have any
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size (except that the compressed data for one block must fit in
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available memory). A block is terminated when deflate() determines that
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it would be useful to start another block with fresh trees. (This is
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somewhat similar to the behavior of LZW-based _compress_.)
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Duplicated strings are found using a hash table. All input strings of
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length 3 are inserted in the hash table. A hash index is computed for
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the next 3 bytes. If the hash chain for this index is not empty, all
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strings in the chain are compared with the current input string, and
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the longest match is selected.
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The hash chains are searched starting with the most recent strings, to
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favor small distances and thus take advantage of the Huffman encoding.
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The hash chains are singly linked. There are no deletions from the
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hash chains, the algorithm simply discards matches that are too old.
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To avoid a worst-case situation, very long hash chains are arbitrarily
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truncated at a certain length, determined by a runtime option (level
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parameter of deflateInit). So deflate() does not always find the longest
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possible match but generally finds a match which is long enough.
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deflate() also defers the selection of matches with a lazy evaluation
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mechanism. After a match of length N has been found, deflate() searches for
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a longer match at the next input byte. If a longer match is found, the
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previous match is truncated to a length of one (thus producing a single
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literal byte) and the process of lazy evaluation begins again. Otherwise,
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the original match is kept, and the next match search is attempted only N
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The lazy match evaluation is also subject to a runtime parameter. If
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the current match is long enough, deflate() reduces the search for a longer
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match, thus speeding up the whole process. If compression ratio is more
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important than speed, deflate() attempts a complete second search even if
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the first match is already long enough.
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The lazy match evaluation is not performed for the fastest compression
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modes (level parameter 1 to 3). For these fast modes, new strings
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are inserted in the hash table only when no match was found, or
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when the match is not too long. This degrades the compression ratio
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but saves time since there are both fewer insertions and fewer searches.
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2. Decompression algorithm (inflate)
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The key question is how to represent a Huffman code (or any prefix code) so
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that you can decode fast. The most important characteristic is that shorter
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codes are much more common than longer codes, so pay attention to decoding the
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short codes fast, and let the long codes take longer to decode.
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inflate() sets up a first level table that covers some number of bits of
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input less than the length of longest code. It gets that many bits from the
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stream, and looks it up in the table. The table will tell if the next
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code is that many bits or less and how many, and if it is, it will tell
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the value, else it will point to the next level table for which inflate()
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grabs more bits and tries to decode a longer code.
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How many bits to make the first lookup is a tradeoff between the time it
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takes to decode and the time it takes to build the table. If building the
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table took no time (and if you had infinite memory), then there would only
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be a first level table to cover all the way to the longest code. However,
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building the table ends up taking a lot longer for more bits since short
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codes are replicated many times in such a table. What inflate() does is
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simply to make the number of bits in the first table a variable, and then
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to set that variable for the maximum speed.
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For inflate, which has 286 possible codes for the literal/length tree, the size
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of the first table is nine bits. Also the distance trees have 30 possible
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values, and the size of the first table is six bits. Note that for each of
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those cases, the table ended up one bit longer than the ``average'' code
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length, i.e. the code length of an approximately flat code which would be a
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little more than eight bits for 286 symbols and a little less than five bits
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2.2 More details on the inflate table lookup
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Ok, you want to know what this cleverly obfuscated inflate tree actually
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looks like. You are correct that it's not a Huffman tree. It is simply a
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lookup table for the first, let's say, nine bits of a Huffman symbol. The
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symbol could be as short as one bit or as long as 15 bits. If a particular
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symbol is shorter than nine bits, then that symbol's translation is duplicated
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in all those entries that start with that symbol's bits. For example, if the
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symbol is four bits, then it's duplicated 32 times in a nine-bit table. If a
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symbol is nine bits long, it appears in the table once.
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If the symbol is longer than nine bits, then that entry in the table points
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to another similar table for the remaining bits. Again, there are duplicated
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entries as needed. The idea is that most of the time the symbol will be short
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and there will only be one table look up. (That's whole idea behind data
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compression in the first place.) For the less frequent long symbols, there
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will be two lookups. If you had a compression method with really long
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symbols, you could have as many levels of lookups as is efficient. For
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inflate, two is enough.
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So a table entry either points to another table (in which case nine bits in
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the above example are gobbled), or it contains the translation for the symbol
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and the number of bits to gobble. Then you start again with the next
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You may wonder: why not just have one lookup table for how ever many bits the
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longest symbol is? The reason is that if you do that, you end up spending
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more time filling in duplicate symbol entries than you do actually decoding.
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At least for deflate's output that generates new trees every several 10's of
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kbytes. You can imagine that filling in a 2^15 entry table for a 15-bit code
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would take too long if you're only decoding several thousand symbols. At the
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other extreme, you could make a new table for every bit in the code. In fact,
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that's essentially a Huffman tree. But then you spend too much time
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traversing the tree while decoding, even for short symbols.
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So the number of bits for the first lookup table is a trade of the time to
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fill out the table vs. the time spent looking at the second level and above of
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Here is an example, scaled down:
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The code being decoded, with 10 symbols, from 1 to 6 bits long:
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Let's make the first table three bits long (eight entries):
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110: -> table X (gobble 3 bits)
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111: -> table Y (gobble 3 bits)
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Each entry is what the bits decode as and how many bits that is, i.e. how
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many bits to gobble. Or the entry points to another table, with the number of
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bits to gobble implicit in the size of the table.
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Table X is two bits long since the longest code starting with 110 is five bits
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Table Y is three bits long since the longest code starting with 111 is six
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So what we have here are three tables with a total of 20 entries that had to
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be constructed. That's compared to 64 entries for a single table. Or
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compared to 16 entries for a Huffman tree (six two entry tables and one four
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entry table). Assuming that the code ideally represents the probability of
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the symbols, it takes on the average 1.25 lookups per symbol. That's compared
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to one lookup for the single table, or 1.66 lookups per symbol for the
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There, I think that gives you a picture of what's going on. For inflate, the
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meaning of a particular symbol is often more than just a letter. It can be a
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byte (a "literal"), or it can be either a length or a distance which
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indicates a base value and a number of bits to fetch after the code that is
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added to the base value. Or it might be the special end-of-block code. The
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data structures created in inftrees.c try to encode all that information
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compactly in the tables.
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Jean-loup Gailly Mark Adler
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jloup@gzip.org madler@alumni.caltech.edu
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[LZ77] Ziv J., Lempel A., ``A Universal Algorithm for Sequential Data
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Compression,'' IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, Vol. 23, No. 3,
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``DEFLATE Compressed Data Format Specification'' available in
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http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc1951
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zlib/doc/algorithm.txt
