GZip Create .gz File

Demonstrates how to compress a file to create a .gz (GZip) file.

Note: The .gz file format is a compressed file format. It contains a single file. The .gz file format is not an archive format (i.e. it does not contain a collection of files/directories such as with the .zip, .rar, or .tar file formats). GZip is often combined with TAR to create a .tgz (or .tar.gz).

Note: It is possible for a .gz to contain more than one file, but this is very uncommon.

Downloads for Windows/Linux and Install Instructions

require 'rubygems'
require 'chilkat'


gzip = Chilkat::CkGzip.new()

#  Any string unlocks the component for the 1st 30-days.
success = gzip.UnlockComponent("Anything for 30-day trial")
if (success != true)
    print gzip.lastErrorText() + "\n"
    exit
end

#  File-to-file GZip:
#  Compress "hamlet.xml" to create "hamlet.xml.gz"
success = gzip.CompressFile("hamlet.xml","hamlet.xml.gz")
if (success != true)
    print gzip.lastErrorText() + "\n"
    exit
end

#  File-to-file ungzip
#  Decompress "hamlet.xml.gz" to create "hamletOut.xml"
success = gzip.UncompressFile("hamlet.xml.gz","hamletOut.xml")
if (success != true)
    print gzip.lastErrorText() + "\n"
    exit
end

#  File-to-string ungzip
#  Decompress the contents of a .gz directly to a string variable:
#  The 2nd argument indicates the charset of the character
#  data after it is decompressed.

xmlStr = gzip.uncompressFileToString("hamlet.xml.gz","utf-8")
if (success != true)
    print gzip.lastErrorText() + "\n"
    exit
end

print xmlStr + "\n";

#  The Chilkat GZip API provides much more flexibility than shown
#  here.  See the reference documentation at
#  http://www.chilkatsoft.com/refdoc for more information.