DEFLATE

File Format
Name	DEFLATE
Ontology	Electronic File Formats Compression DEFLATE
PRONOM	x-cmp/16
Released	~1991

Deflate (stylized as DEFLATE, Deflate, or deflate) is a widely used lossless compression algorithm based on LZ77 and Huffman coding.

It was originally developed for use in PKZIP 2.x. For many software implementations that support creation or extraction of ZIP archive files, DEFLATE is the only compression algorithm supported.

There is a popular extension of Deflate known as zlib format, and the term "Deflate" often turns out to mean zlib. Formats that use Deflate without zlib include ZIP and gzip.

The term Inflate is sometimes used in conjunction with decompressing this format.

See also

• ZIP
• zlib

Software

• Refer to zlib#Software. Libraries that support zlib often also support the original Deflate format.

References

• RFC 1951: DEFLATE Compressed Data Format Specification version 1.3
• DEFLATE : Wikipedia
• Dissecting the GZIP format