Read and write directly from and to compressed files in C

Question

Hi,

in Java I think it is possible to cruise through jar files like they were not compressed. Is there some similar (and portable) thing in C/C++ ?

I would like to import binary data into memory from a large (zipped or similar) file without decompressing to disk first and afterwards writing to disk in a compressed way.

Maybe some trick with shell pipes and the zip utility?

Answer 1

I think you want zlib: http://www.zlib.net/