RFC 1951      DEFLATE Compressed Data Format Specification      May 1996


         BFINAL is set if and only if this is the last block of the data
         set.

         BTYPE specifies how the data are compressed, as follows:

            00 - no compression
            01 - compressed with fixed Huffman codes
            10 - compressed with dynamic Huffman codes
            11 - reserved (error)

         The only difference between the two compressed cases is how the
         Huffman codes for the literal/length and distance alphabets are
         defined.

         In all cases, the decoding algorithm for the actual data is as
         follows:

            do
               read block header from input stream.
               if stored with no compression
                  skip any remaining bits in current partially
                     processed byte
                  read LEN and NLEN (see next section)
                  copy LEN bytes of data to output
               otherwise
                  if compressed with dynamic Huffman codes
                     read representation of code trees (see
                        subsection below)
                  loop (until end of block code recognized)
                     decode literal/length value from input stream
                     if value < 256
                        copy value (literal byte) to output stream
                     otherwise
                        if value = end of block (256)
                           break from loop
                        otherwise (value = 257..285)
                           decode distance from input stream

                           move backwards distance bytes in the output
                           stream, and copy length bytes from this
                           position to the output stream.
                  end loop
            while not last block

         Note that a duplicated string reference may refer to a string
         in a previous block; i.e., the backward distance may cross one
         or more block boundaries.  However a distance cannot refer past
         the beginning of the output stream.  (An application using a




 
RFC 1951      DEFLATE Compressed Data Format Specification      May 1996


         preset dictionary might discard part of the output stream; a
         distance can refer to that part of the output stream anyway)
         Note also that the referenced string may overlap the current
         position; for example, if the last 2 bytes decoded have values
         X and Y, a string reference with <length = 5, distance = 2>
         adds X,Y,X,Y,X to the output stream.

         We now specify each compression method in turn.

      3.2.4. Non-compressed blocks (BTYPE=00)

         Any bits of input up to the next byte boundary are ignored.
         The rest of the block consists of the following information:

              0   1   2   3   4...
            +---+---+---+---+================================+
            |  LEN  | NLEN  |... LEN bytes of literal data...|
            +---+---+---+---+================================+

         LEN is the number of data bytes in the block.  NLEN is the
         one's complement of LEN.

      3.2.5. Compressed blocks (length and distance codes)

         As noted above, encoded data blocks in the "deflate" format
         consist of sequences of symbols drawn from three conceptually
         distinct alphabets: either literal bytes, from the alphabet of
         byte values (0..255), or <length, backward distance> pairs,
         where the length is drawn from (3..258) and the distance is
         drawn from (1..32,768).  In fact, the literal and length
         alphabets are merged into a single alphabet (0..285), where
         values 0..255 represent literal bytes, the value 256 indicates
         end-of-block, and values 257..285 represent length codes
         (possibly in conjunction with extra bits following the symbol