deflate and inflate (zlib.h) in C

Question

I am trying to implement the zlib.h deflate and inflate functions to compress and decompress a char array (not a file).

I would like to know if the following syntax is correct ? Am I missing something or defined something incorrectly ?

char a[50] = "Hello World!";
char b[50];
char c[50];

// deflate
// zlib struct
z_stream defstream;
defstream.zalloc = Z_NULL;
defstream.zfree = Z_NULL;
defstream.opaque = Z_NULL;
defstream.avail_in = (uInt)sizeof(a); // size of input
defstream.next_in = (Bytef *)a; // input char array
defstream.avail_out = (uInt)sizeof(b); // size of output
defstream.next_out = (Bytef *)b; // output char array

deflateInit(&defstream, Z_DEFAULT_COMPRESSION);
deflate(&defstream, Z_FINISH);
deflateEnd(&defstream);

printf("Deflate:\n%lu\n%s\n", strlen(b), b);

// inflate
// zlib struct
z_stream infstream;
infstream.zalloc = Z_NULL;
infstream.zfree = Z_NULL;
infstream.opaque = Z_NULL;
infstream.avail_in = (uInt)sizeof(b); // size of input
infstream.next_in = (Bytef *)b; // input char array
infstream.avail_out = (uInt)sizeof(c); // size of output
infstream.next_out = (Bytef *)c; // output char array

inflateInit(&infstream);
inflate(&infstream, Z_NO_FLUSH);
inflateEnd(&infstream);

printf("Inflate:\n%lu\n%s\n", strlen(c), c);

Answer 1

zlib already has a simple inflate/deflate function you can use.

char a[50] = "Hello, world!";
char b[50];
char c[50];

uLong ucompSize = strlen(a)+1; // "Hello, world!" + NULL delimiter.
uLong compSize = compressBound(ucompSize);

// Deflate
compress((Bytef *)b, &compSize, (Bytef *)a, ucompSize);

// Inflate
uncompress((Bytef *)c, &ucompSize, (Bytef *)b, compSize);

When in doubt, check out the zlib manual. My code is crappy, sorry =/

Answer 2

The zpipe example (http://zlib.net/zpipe.c) pretty much covers it, just remove the file ops(the f prefixed function), and you replace in and out with your in-memory buffers, though it may be enough to only replace in or keep the buffers as-is depending on you usage. Just note that you will need to make your out buffer resizeable to account for decompression of arbitrarily sized data, if you are planning on having unknown sized chunks