12. Data Compression and Archiving
**********************************

The modules described in this chapter support data compression with
the zlib, gzip, and bzip2 algorithms, and  the creation of ZIP- and
tar-format archives. See also Archiving operations provided by the
"shutil" module.

* 12.1. "zlib" — Compression compatible with **gzip**

* 12.2. "gzip" — Support for **gzip** files

  * 12.2.1. Examples of usage

* 12.3. "bz2" — Compression compatible with **bzip2**

  * 12.3.1. (De)compression of files

  * 12.3.2. Sequential (de)compression

  * 12.3.3. One-shot (de)compression

* 12.4. "zipfile" — Work with ZIP archives

  * 12.4.1. ZipFile Objects

  * 12.4.2. PyZipFile Objects

  * 12.4.3. ZipInfo Objects

  * 12.4.4. Command-Line Interface

    * 12.4.4.1. Command-line options

* 12.5. "tarfile" — Read and write tar archive files

  * 12.5.1. TarFile Objects

  * 12.5.2. TarInfo Objects

  * 12.5.3. Examples

  * 12.5.4. Supported tar formats

  * 12.5.5. Unicode issues