DeflateStream Class
Updated: August 2009
Provides methods and properties for compressing and decompressing streams using the Deflate algorithm.
Assembly: System (in System.dll)
This class represents the Deflate algorithm, an industry standard algorithm for lossless file compression and decompression. It uses a combination of the LZ77 algorithm and Huffman coding. Data can be produced or consumed, even for an arbitrarily long, sequentially presented input data stream, using only previously bound amount of intermediate storage. The format can be implemented readily in a manner not covered by patents. For more information, see RFC 1951. "DEFLATE Compressed Data Format Specification version 1.3." This class cannot be used to compress files larger than 4 GB.
This class does not inherently provide functionality for adding files to or extracting files from .zip archives.
The GZipStream class uses the gzip data format, which includes a cyclic redundancy check value for detecting data corruption. The gzip data format uses the same compression algorithm as the DeflateStream class.
The compression functionality in DeflateStream and GZipStream is exposed as a stream. Data is read in on a byte-by-byte basis, so it is not possible to perform multiple passes to determine the best method for compressing entire files or large blocks of data. The DeflateStream and GZipStream classes are best used on uncompressed sources of data. If the source data is already compressed, using these classes may actually increase the size of the stream.
The following example shows how to use the GZipStream class to compress and decompress a directory of files.
Windows 7, Windows Vista, Windows XP SP2, Windows XP Media Center Edition, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, Windows XP Starter Edition, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2000 SP4, Windows Millennium Edition, Windows 98, Windows CE, Windows Mobile for Smartphone, Windows Mobile for Pocket PC, Xbox 360, Zune
The .NET Framework and .NET Compact Framework do not support all versions of every platform. For a list of the supported versions, see .NET Framework System Requirements.