Hacker News new | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submit login

>It's a stream-oriented format. There are no file-global offsets or lengths. There are some relative lengths and offsets, but they're going to be 8 or 16 bit values. Most of the tests you're suggesting don't look particularly useful.

I don't think that streaming vs file is relevant. The deflate algorithm (stream) may have no global knowledge of the eventual file size but the gzip file format does.

Anyways, even with a cursory google search, we can find a compression bug related to file sizes:

https://bugs.openjdk.java.net/browse/JDK-6419239

As for an example of streaming bugs, zlib's creator Mark Adler reported that Microsoft coded its deflate implementation incorrectly.

http://stackoverflow.com/a/11435898

The lesson is that re-implementing even well-known algorithms such as zlib/gzip/pkzip is not trivial.




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: