For applications that require data compression, the functions in this

module allow compression and decompression, using the zlib library.

The zlib library has its own home page at

most recent version as of September 2000; use a later version if one

is available. There are known incompatibilities between the Python

module and earlier versions of the zlib library.

\begin{seealso}

\seemodule{gzip}{Reading and writing \program{gzip}-format files.}

\end{seealso}