A Python LZ77-Compressor

A simplified implementation of the LZ77 compression algorithm in python.

Implementation

The compressor follows the implementation of the standard LZ77 compression algorithm. Using a lookahead buffer at a certain position, the longest match is found from a fixed size window of data history. If a match is found, the substring is replaced with a pointer (distance) to the start of the match, and the length of the match.

Setup and Dependencies

First, you will need to clone the repository:

  git clone https://github.com/manassra/LZ77-Compressor.git

The LZ77Compressor uses the bitarray python module as the only dependency.

This dependency can be install by using pip, the python package manager, as follows:

  pip install -r requirements.txt 

Usage

  from LZ77 import LZ77Compressor
  
  compressor = LZ77Compressor(window_size=20) # window_size is optional

Options

window_size an optional integer specifying the length of the history window. Default is 20.

Compressing Files

  input_file_path = '/Users/manassra/...'
  output_file_path = '/Users/manassra/...'
  
  # compress the input file and write it as binary into the output file
  compressor.compress(input_file_path, output_file_path)
  
  # or assign compressed data into a variable 
  compressed_data = compressor.compress(input_file_path)

Options

verbose if True, the compression description is printed to standard output.

Example: if a file has "hello hello", verbose will print the following description: <0, h> <0, e> <0, l> <0, l> <0, o> <0, > <1, 6, 5>

Decompressing Files

  input_file_path = '/Users/manassra/...'
  output_file_path = '/Users/manassra/...'
  
  # decompress the input file and write it as binary into the output file
  compressor.decompress(input_file_path, output_file_path)
  
  # or assign decompressed data into a variable 
  decompressed_data = compressor.decompress(input_file_path)

Examples

the folder /examples has the following files:

input.txt, a file containing some text (size: 231 bytes)

compressed_window_100.txt, a compressed output of it using this algorithm with window size of 100 (size: 71 bytes, 30% of original size)

decompressed.txt, the decompressed file back to its original form (same as input.txt, size: 231 bytes)