Perl Requires Chilkat v9.5.0.66+

Compress and Decompress Hex String

See more Compression Examples

Imagine we have data represented as a hex string. This example demonstrates how to decode, compress, and re-encode to a smaller hex string representing the compressed data. An even better choice is to re-encode to a more compact encoding such as base64. Chilkat2 Perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Chilkat2;

my $success = 0;

# This example assumes the Chilkat API to have been previously unlocked.
# See Global Unlock Sample for sample code.

my $strHex = '54686520717569636B2062726F776E20666F78206A756D706564206F76657220746865206C617A7920646F672E0D0A54686520717569636B2062726F776E20666F78206A756D706564206F76657220746865206C617A7920646F672E0D0A54686520717569636B2062726F776E20666F78206A756D706564206F76657220746865206C617A7920646F672E0D0A54686520717569636B2062726F776E20666F78206A756D706564206F76657220746865206C617A7920646F672E0D0A54686520717569636B2062726F776E20666F78206A756D706564206F76657220746865206C617A7920646F672E0D0A0D0A';

my $compress = Chilkat2::Compression->new;
$compress->Algorithm('deflate');

my $binDat = Chilkat2::BinData->new;
# Load the hex string into a BinData object.
# This decodes the hexidecimal. The decoded bytes will be contained in the BinData.
$binDat->AppendEncoded($strHex, 'hex');

# Compress the BinData.
$compress->CompressBd($binDat);

# Get the compressed data in hex format:
my $compressedHex = $binDat->GetEncoded('hex');
print "compressed hex:\n";
print $compressedHex, "\n";

# The compressed hex is: 0BC94855282CCD4CCE56482ACA2FCF5348CBAF50C82ACD2D484D51C82F4B2D522801CAE72456552AA4E4A7EBF172850C61E5BC5C00

# Even better, get the compressed data in base64 format:
# (base64url and modbase64 are other valid choices...)
my $compressedBase64 = $binDat->GetEncoded('base64');
print "compressed base64:\n";
print $compressedBase64, "\n";

# The compressed base64 is: C8lIVSgszUzOVkgqyi/PU0jLr1DIKs0tSE1RyC9LLVIoAcrnJFZVKqTkp+vxcoUMYeW8XAA=

# Now decompress:
$binDat->Clear();
$binDat->AppendEncoded($compressedHex, 'hex');
$compress->DecompressBd($binDat);

my $decompressedHex = $binDat->GetEncoded('hex');
print "decompressed hex:\n";
print $decompressedHex, "\n";

# The output is the original hex string:
# 54686520717569636B2062726F776E20666F78206A756D706564206F76657220746865206C617A7920646F672E0D0A54686520717569636B2062726F776E20666F78206A756D706564206F76657220746865206C617A7920646F672E0D0A54686520717569636B2062726F776E20666F78206A756D706564206F76657220746865206C617A7920646F672E0D0A54686520717569636B2062726F776E20666F78206A756D706564206F76657220746865206C617A7920646F672E0D0A54686520717569636B2062726F776E20666F78206A756D706564206F76657220746865206C617A7920646F672E0D0A0D0A