Why does cURL use zlib?

Question

It is possible to compile Libcurl with OpenSSL, SSH2 and zlib support. I found out that OpenSSL is used as an alternative for SSL traffic as it's described on the FAQ, and I can deduce what SSH2 does, but what exactly is zlib used for?

Answer 1

HTTP responses can be compressed with gzip. The zlib library is used to decompress these responses.