Ning-compress is a Java library for encoding and decoding data in LZF format, written by Tatu Saloranta (tatu.saloranta@iki.fi)
Data format and algorithm based on original LZF library by Marc A Lehmann. See LZF Format for full description.
Format differs slightly from some other adaptations, such as one used by H2 database project (by Thomas Mueller); although internal block compression structure is the same, block identifiers differ. This package uses the original LZF identifiers to be 100% compatible with existing command-line lzf tool(s).
LZF alfgorithm itself is optimized for speed, with somewhat more modest compression: compared to Deflate (algorithm gzip uses) LZF can be 5-6 times as fast to compress, and twice as fast to decompress.
See Wiki for more details; here's a "TL;DNR" version.
Both compression and decompression can be done either by streaming approach:
InputStream in = new LZFInputStream(new FileInputStream("data.lzf"));
OutputStream out = new LZFOutputStream(new FileOutputStream("results.lzf"));
InputStream compIn = new LZFCompressingInputStream(new FileInputStream("stuff.txt"));
or by block operation:
byte[] compressed = LZFEncoder.encode(uncompressedData);
byte[] uncompressed = LZFDecoder.decode(compressedData);
and you can even use the LZF jar as a command-line tool (it has manifest that points to 'com.ning.compress.lzf.LZF' as the class having main() method to call), like so:
java -jar compress-lzf-1.0.1.jar
(which will display necessary usage arguments for -c(ompressing) or -d(ecompressing) files.
Besides Java support, LZF codecs / bindings exist for non-JVM languages as well:
- C: liblzf (the original LZF package!)
- Go: Golly
- Javascript(!): freecode LZF (or via SourceForge)
- Perl: Compress::LZF
- Python: Python-LZF
- Ruby: glebtv/lzf, LZF/Ruby
Check out jvm-compress-benchmark for comparison of space- and time-efficiency of this LZF implementation, relative other available Java-accessible compression libraries.