RFC 7932
Brotli Compressed Data Format
Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) J. Alakuijala Request for Comments: 7932 Z. Szabadka Category: Informational Google, Inc. ISSN: 2070-1721 July 2016 Brotli Compressed Data FormatAbstract
This specification defines a lossless compressed data format that compresses data using a combination of the LZ77 algorithm and Huffman coding, with efficiency comparable to the best currently available general-purpose compression methods. Status of This Memo This document is not an Internet Standards Track specification; it is published for informational purposes. This document is a product of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It has been approved for publication by the Internet Engineering Steering Group (IESG). Not all documents approved by the IESG are a candidate for any level of Internet Standard; see Section 2 of RFC 7841. Information about the current status of this document, any errata, and how to provide feedback on it may be obtained at http://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc7932. Copyright Notice Copyright (c) 2016 IETF Trust and the persons identified as the document authors. All rights reserved. This document is subject to BCP 78 and the IETF Trust's Legal Provisions Relating to IETF Documents (http://trustee.ietf.org/license-info) in effect on the date of publication of this document. Please review these documents carefully, as they describe your rights and restrictions with respect to this document. Code Components extracted from this document must include Simplified BSD License text as described in Section 4.e of the Trust Legal Provisions and are provided without warranty as described in the Simplified BSD License.
Table of Contents
1. Introduction ....................................................3 1.1. Purpose ....................................................3 1.2. Intended Audience ..........................................3 1.3. Scope ......................................................4 1.4. Compliance .................................................4 1.5. Definitions of Terms and Conventions Used ..................4 1.5.1. Packing into Bytes ..................................5 2. Compressed Representation Overview ..............................6 3. Compressed Representation of Prefix Codes ......................10 3.1. Introduction to Prefix Coding .............................10 3.2. Use of Prefix Coding in the Brotli Format .................11 3.3. Alphabet Sizes ............................................13 3.4. Simple Prefix Codes .......................................14 3.5. Complex Prefix Codes ......................................15 4. Encoding of Distances ..........................................17 5. Encoding of Literal Insertion Lengths and Copy Lengths .........19 6. Encoding of Block-Switch Commands ..............................22 7. Context Modeling ...............................................23 7.1. Context Modes and Context ID Lookup for Literals ..........23 7.2. Context ID for Distances ..................................26 7.3. Encoding of the Context Map ...............................26 8. Static Dictionary ..............................................28 9. Compressed Data Format .........................................31 9.1. Format of the Stream Header ...............................31 9.2. Format of the Meta-Block Header ...........................32 9.3. Format of the Meta-Block Data .............................35 10. Decoding Algorithm ............................................36 11. Considerations for Compressor Implementations .................38 11.1. Trivial Compressor .......................................39 11.2. Aligning Compressed Meta-Blocks to Byte Boundaries .......39 11.3. Creating Self-Contained Parts within the Compressed Data ..........................................40 12. Security Considerations .......................................41 13. IANA Considerations ...........................................42 14. Informative References ........................................43 Appendix A. Static Dictionary Data ................................44 Appendix B. List of Word Transformations .........................124 Appendix C. Computing CRC-32 Check Values ........................127 Appendix D. Source Code ..........................................127 Acknowledgments ..................................................127 Authors' Addresses ...............................................128
1. Introduction
1.1. Purpose
The purpose of this specification is to define a lossless compressed data format that: * is independent of CPU type, operating system, file system, and character set; hence, it can be used for interchange. * can be produced or consumed, even for an arbitrarily long, sequentially presented input data stream, using only an a priori bounded amount of intermediate storage; hence, it can be used in data communications or similar structures, such as Unix filters. * compresses data with a compression ratio comparable to the best currently available general-purpose compression methods, in particular, considerably better than the gzip program. * decompresses much faster than current LZMA implementations. The data format defined by this specification does not attempt to: * allow random access to compressed data. * compress specialized data (e.g., raster graphics) as densely as the best currently available specialized algorithms. This document is the authoritative specification of the brotli compressed data format. It defines the set of valid brotli compressed data streams and a decoder algorithm that produces the uncompressed data stream from a valid brotli compressed data stream.1.2. Intended Audience
This specification is intended for use by software implementers to compress data into and/or decompress data from the brotli format. The text of the specification assumes a basic background in programming at the level of bits and other primitive data representations. Familiarity with the technique of Huffman coding is helpful but not required.
This specification uses (heavily) the notations and terminology introduced in the DEFLATE format specification [RFC1951]. For the sake of completeness, we always include the whole text of the relevant parts of RFC 1951; therefore, familiarity with the DEFLATE format is helpful but not required. The compressed data format defined in this specification is an integral part of the WOFF File Format 2.0 [WOFF2]; therefore, this specification is also intended for implementers of WOFF 2.0 compressors and decompressors.1.3. Scope
This document specifies a method for representing a sequence of bytes as a (usually shorter) sequence of bits and a method for packing the latter bit sequence into bytes.1.4. Compliance
Unless otherwise indicated below, a compliant decompressor must be able to accept and decompress any data set that conforms to all the specifications presented here. A compliant compressor must produce data sets that conform to all the specifications presented here.1.5. Definitions of Terms and Conventions Used
Byte: 8 bits stored or transmitted as a unit (same as an octet). For this specification, a byte is exactly 8 bits, even on machines that store a character on a number of bits different from eight. See below for the numbering of bits within a byte. String: a sequence of arbitrary bytes. Bytes stored within a computer do not have a "bit order", since they are always treated as a unit. However, a byte considered as an integer between 0 and 255 does have a most and least significant bit (lsb), and since we write numbers with the most significant digit on the left, we also write bytes with the most significant bit (msb) on the left. In the diagrams below, we number the bits of a byte so that bit 0 is the least significant bit, i.e., the bits are numbered: +--------+ |76543210| +--------+
Within a computer, a number may occupy multiple bytes. All multi-
byte numbers in the format described here are stored with the least
significant byte first (at the lower memory address). For example,
the decimal number 520 is stored as:
0 1
+--------+--------+
|00001000|00000010|
+--------+--------+
^ ^
| |
| + more significant byte = 2 * 256
+ less significant byte = 8
1.5.1. Packing into Bytes
This document does not address the issue of the order in which bits
of a byte are transmitted on a bit-sequential medium, since the final
data format described here is byte rather than bit oriented.
However, we describe the compressed block format below as a sequence
of data elements of various bit lengths, not a sequence of bytes.
Therefore, we must specify how to pack these data elements into bytes
to form the final compressed byte sequence:
* Data elements are packed into bytes in order of increasing bit
number within the byte, i.e., starting with the least
significant bit of the byte.
* Data elements other than prefix codes are packed starting with
the least significant bit of the data element. These are
referred to here as "integer values" and are considered
unsigned.
* Prefix codes are packed starting with the most significant bit
of the code.
In other words, if one were to print out the compressed data as a
sequence of bytes, starting with the first byte at the *right* margin
and proceeding to the *left*, with the most significant bit of each
byte on the left as usual, one would be able to parse the result from
right to left, with fixed-width elements in the correct msb-to-lsb
order and prefix codes in bit-reversed order (i.e., with the first
bit of the code in the relative lsb position).
As an example, consider packing the following data elements into a
sequence of 3 bytes: 3-bit integer value 6, 4-bit integer value 2,
prefix code 110, prefix code 10, 12-bit integer value 3628.
byte 2 byte 1 byte 0
+--------+--------+--------+
|11100010|11000101|10010110|
+--------+--------+--------+
^ ^ ^ ^ ^
| | | | |
| | | | +------ integer value 6
| | | +---------- integer value 2
| | +-------------- prefix code 110
| +---------------- prefix code 10
+----------------------------- integer value 3628
2. Compressed Representation Overview
A compressed data set consists of a header and a series of meta-
blocks. Each meta-block decompresses to a sequence of 0 to
16,777,216 (16 MiB) uncompressed bytes. The final uncompressed data
is the concatenation of the uncompressed sequences from each meta-
block.
The header contains the size of the sliding window that was used
during compression. The decompressor must retain at least that
amount of uncompressed data prior to the current position in the
stream, in order to be able to decompress what follows. The sliding
window size is a power of two, minus 16, where the power is in the
range of 10 to 24. The possible sliding window sizes range from 1
KiB - 16 B to 16 MiB - 16 B.
Each meta-block is compressed using a combination of the LZ77
algorithm (Lempel-Ziv 1977, [LZ77]) and Huffman coding. The result
of Huffman coding is referred to here as a "prefix code". The prefix
codes for each meta-block are independent of those for previous or
subsequent meta-blocks; the LZ77 algorithm may use a reference to a
duplicated string occurring in a previous meta-block, up to the
sliding window size of uncompressed bytes before. In addition, in
the brotli format, a string reference may instead refer to a static
dictionary entry.
Each meta-block consists of two parts: a meta-block header that
describes the representation of the compressed data part and a
compressed data part. The compressed data consists of a series of
commands. Each command consists of two parts: a sequence of literal
bytes (of strings that have not been detected as duplicated within
the sliding window) and a pointer to a duplicated string, which is
represented as a pair <length, backward distance>. There can be zero
literal bytes in the command. The minimum length of the string to be
duplicated is two, but the last command in the meta-block is
permitted to have only literals and no pointer to a string to
duplicate.
Each command in the compressed data is represented using three
categories of prefix codes:
1) One set of prefix codes are for the literal sequence lengths
(also referred to as literal insertion lengths) and backward
copy lengths. That is, a single code word represents two
lengths: one of the literal sequence and one of the backward
copy.
2) One set of prefix codes are for literals.
3) One set of prefix codes are for distances.
The prefix code descriptions for each meta-block appear in a compact
form just before the compressed data in the meta-block header. The
insert-and-copy length and distance prefix codes may be followed by
extra bits that are added to the base values determined by the codes.
The number of extra bits is determined by the code.
One meta-block command then appears as a sequence of prefix codes:
Insert-and-copy length, literal, literal, ..., literal, distance
where the insert-and-copy length defines an insertion length and a
copy length. The insertion length determines the number of literals
that immediately follow. The distance defines how far back to go for
the copy and the copy length determines the number of bytes to copy.
The resulting uncompressed data is the sequence of bytes:
literal, literal, ..., literal, copy, copy, ..., copy
where the number of literal bytes and copy bytes are determined by
the insert-and-copy length code. (The number of bytes copied for a
static dictionary entry can vary from the copy length.)
The last command in the meta-block may end with the last literal if
the total uncompressed length of the meta-block has been satisfied.
In that case, there is no distance in the last command, and the copy
length is ignored.
There can be more than one prefix code for each category, where the
prefix code to use for the next element of that category is
determined by the context of the compressed stream that precedes that
element. Part of that context is three current block types, one for
each category. A block type is in the range of 0..255. For each
category there is a count of how many elements of that category
remain to be decoded using the current block type. Once that count
is expended, a new block type and block count is read from the stream
immediately preceding the next element of that category, which will
use the new block type.
The insert-and-copy block type directly determines which prefix code
to use for the next insert-and-copy length. For the literal and
distance elements, the respective block type is used in combination
with other context information to determine which prefix code to use
for the next element.
Consider the following example:
(IaC0, L0, L1, L2, D0)(IaC1, D1)(IaC2, L3, L4, D2)(IaC3, L5, D3)
The meta-block here has four commands, contained in parentheses for
clarity, where each of the three categories of symbols within these
commands can be interpreted using different block types. Here we
separate out each category as its own sequence to show an example of
block types assigned to those elements. Each square-bracketed group
is a block that uses the same block type:
[IaC0, IaC1][IaC2, IaC3] <-- insert-and-copy: block types 0 and 1
[L0, L1][L2, L3, L4][L5] <-- literals: block types 0, 1, and 0
[D0][D1, D2, D3] <-- distances: block types 0 and 1
The subsequent blocks within each block category must have different
block types, but we see that block types can be reused later in the
meta-block. The block types are numbered from 0 to the maximum block
type number of 255, and the first block of each block category is
type 0. The block structure of a meta-block is represented by the
sequence of block-switch commands for each block category, where a
block-switch command is a pair <block type, block count>. The block-
switch commands are represented in the compressed data before the
start of each new block using a prefix code for block types and a
separate prefix code for block counts for each block category. For
the above example, the physical layout of the meta-block is then:
IaC0 L0 L1 LBlockSwitch(1, 3) L2 D0 IaC1 DBlockSwitch(1, 3) D1
IaCBlockSwitch(1, 2) IaC2 L3 L4 D2 IaC3 LBlockSwitch(0, 1) L5 D3
where xBlockSwitch(t, n) switches to block type t for a count of n
elements. In this example, note that DBlockSwitch(1, 3) immediately
precedes the next required distance, D1. It does not follow the last
distance of the previous block, D0. Whenever an element of a category is needed, and the block count for that category has reached zero, then a new block type and count are read from the stream just before reading that next element. The block-switch commands for the first blocks of each category are not part of the meta-block compressed data. Instead, the first block type is defined to be 0, and the first block count for each category is encoded in the meta-block header. The prefix codes for the block types and counts, a total of six prefix codes over the three categories, are defined in a compact form in the meta-block header. Each category of value (insert-and-copy lengths, literals, and distances) can be encoded with any prefix code from a collection of prefix codes belonging to the same category appearing in the meta- block header. The particular prefix code used can depend on two factors: the block type of the block the value appears in and the context of the value. In the case of the literals, the context is the previous two bytes in the uncompressed data; and in the case of distances, the context is the copy length from the same command. For insert-and-copy lengths, no context is used and the prefix code depends only on the block type. In the case of literals and distances, the context is mapped to a context ID in the range 0..63 for literals and 0..3 for distances. The matrix of the prefix code indexes for each block type and context ID, called the context map, is encoded in a compact form in the meta-block header. For example, the prefix code to use to decode L2 depends on the block type (1), and the literal context ID determined by the two uncompressed bytes that were decoded from L0 and L1. Similarly, the prefix code to use to decode D0 depends on the block type (0) and the distance context ID determined by the copy length decoded from IaC0. The prefix code to use to decode IaC3 depends only on the block type (1). In addition to the parts listed above (prefix code for insert-and- copy lengths, literals, distances, block types, block counts, and the context map), the meta-block header contains the number of uncompressed bytes coded in the meta-block and two additional parameters used in the representation of match distances: the number of postfix bits and the number of direct distance codes. A compressed meta-block may be marked in the header as the last meta- block, which terminates the compressed stream. A meta-block may, instead, simply store the uncompressed data directly as bytes on byte boundaries with no coding or matching strings. In this case, the meta-block header information only
contains the number of uncompressed bytes and the indication that the meta-block is uncompressed. An uncompressed meta-block cannot be the last meta-block. A meta-block may also be empty, which generates no uncompressed data at all. An empty meta-block may contain metadata information as bytes starting on byte boundaries, which are not part of either the sliding window or the uncompressed data. Thus, these metadata bytes cannot be used to create matching strings in subsequent meta-blocks and are not used as context bytes for literals.3. Compressed Representation of Prefix Codes
3.1. Introduction to Prefix Coding
Prefix coding represents symbols from an a priori known alphabet by bit sequences (codes), one code for each symbol, in a manner such that different symbols may be represented by bit sequences of different lengths, but a parser can always parse an encoded string unambiguously symbol-by-symbol. We define a prefix code in terms of a binary tree in which the two edges descending from each non-leaf node are labeled 0 and 1, and in which the leaf nodes correspond one-for-one with (are labeled with) the symbols of the alphabet. The code for a symbol is the sequence of 0's and 1's on the edges leading from the root to the leaf labeled with that symbol. For example: /\ Symbol Code 0 1 ------ ---- / \ A 00 /\ B B 1 0 1 C 011 / \ D 010 A /\ 0 1 / \ D C A parser can decode the next symbol from the compressed stream by walking down the tree from the root, at each step choosing the edge corresponding to the next compressed data bit. Given an alphabet with known symbol frequencies, the Huffman algorithm allows the construction of an optimal prefix code (one that represents strings with those symbol frequencies using the fewest
bits of any possible prefix codes for that alphabet). Such a prefix code is called a Huffman code. (See [HUFFMAN] for additional information on Huffman codes.) In the brotli format, note that the prefix codes for the various alphabets must not exceed certain maximum code lengths. This constraint complicates the algorithm for computing code lengths from symbol frequencies. Again, see [HUFFMAN] for details.3.2. Use of Prefix Coding in the Brotli Format
The prefix codes used for each alphabet in the brotli format are canonical prefix codes, which have two additional rules: * All codes of a given bit length have lexicographically consecutive values, in the same order as the symbols they represent; * Shorter codes lexicographically precede longer codes. We could recode the example above to follow this rule as follows, assuming that the order of the alphabet is ABCD: Symbol Code ------ ---- A 10 B 0 C 110 D 111 That is, 0 precedes 10, which precedes 11x, and 110 and 111 are lexicographically consecutive. Given this rule, we can define the canonical prefix code for an alphabet just by giving the bit lengths of the codes for each symbol of the alphabet in order; this is sufficient to determine the actual codes. In our example, the code is completely defined by the sequence of bit lengths (2, 1, 3, 3). The following algorithm generates the codes as integers, intended to be read from most to least significant bit. The code lengths are initially in tree[I].Len; the codes are produced in tree[I].Code. 1) Count the number of codes for each code length. Let bl_count[N] be the number of codes of length N, N >= 1.
2) Find the numerical value of the smallest code for each code
length:
code = 0;
bl_count[0] = 0;
for (bits = 1; bits <= MAX_BITS; bits++) {
code = (code + bl_count[bits-1]) << 1;
next_code[bits] = code;
}
3) Assign numerical values to all codes, using consecutive values
for all codes of the same length with the base values
determined at step 2. Codes that are never used (which have a
bit length of zero) must not be assigned a value.
for (n = 0; n <= max_code; n++) {
len = tree[n].Len;
if (len != 0) {
tree[n].Code = next_code[len];
next_code[len]++;
}
}
Example:
Consider the alphabet ABCDEFGH, with bit lengths (3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 2,
4, 4). After step 1, we have:
N bl_count[N]
- -----------
2 1
3 5
4 2
Step 2 computes the following next_code values:
N next_code[N]
- ------------
1 0
2 0
3 2
4 14
Step 3 produces the following code values:
Symbol Length Code
------ ------ ----
A 3 010
B 3 011
C 3 100
D 3 101
E 3 110
F 2 00
G 4 1110
H 4 1111
3.3. Alphabet Sizes
Prefix codes are used for different purposes in the brotli format,
and each purpose has a different alphabet size. For literal codes,
the alphabet size is 256. For insert-and-copy length codes, the
alphabet size is 704. For block count codes, the alphabet size is
26. For distance codes, block type codes, and the prefix codes used
in compressing the context map, the alphabet size is dynamic and is
based on parameters defined in later sections. The following table
summarizes the alphabet sizes for the various prefix codes and the
sections of this document in which they are defined.
+-----------------+-------------------------+------------+
| Prefix Code | Alphabet Size | Definition |
+-----------------+-------------------------+------------+
| literal | 256 | |
+-----------------+-------------------------+------------+
| distance | 16 + NDIRECT + | Section 4 |
| | (48 << NPOSTFIX) | |
+-----------------+-------------------------+------------+
| insert-and-copy | 704 | Section 5 |
| length | | |
+-----------------+-------------------------+------------+
| block count | 26 | Section 6 |
+-----------------+-------------------------+------------+
| block type | NBLTYPESx + 2, | Section 6 |
| | (where x is I, L, or D) | |
+-----------------+-------------------------+------------+
| context map | NTREESx + RLEMAXx | Section 7 |
| | (where x is L or D) | |
+-----------------+-------------------------+------------+
3.4. Simple Prefix Codes
The first two bits of the compressed representation of each prefix code distinguish between simple and complex prefix codes. If this value is 1, then a simple prefix code follows as described in this section. Otherwise, a complex prefix code follows as described in Section 3.5. A simple prefix code can have up to four symbols with non-zero code length. The format of the simple prefix code is as follows: 2 bits: value of 1 indicates a simple prefix code 2 bits: NSYM - 1, where NSYM = number of symbols coded NSYM symbols, each encoded using ALPHABET_BITS bits 1 bit: tree-select, present only for NSYM = 4 The value of ALPHABET_BITS depends on the alphabet of the prefix code: it is the smallest number of bits that can represent all symbols in the alphabet. For example, for the alphabet of literal bytes, ALPHABET_BITS is 8. The value of each of the NSYM symbols above is the value of the ALPHABET_BITS width integer value. If the integer value is greater than or equal to the alphabet size, or the value is identical to a previous value, then the stream should be rejected as invalid. Note that the NSYM symbols may not be presented in sorted order. Prefix codes of the same bit length must be assigned to the symbols in sorted order. The (non-zero) code lengths of the symbols can be reconstructed as follows: * if NSYM = 1, the code length for the one symbol is zero -- when encoding this symbol in the compressed data stream using this prefix code, no actual bits are emitted. Similarly, when decoding a symbol using this prefix code, no bits are read and the one symbol is returned. * if NSYM = 2, both symbols have code length 1. * if NSYM = 3, the code lengths for the symbols are 1, 2, 2 in the order they appear in the representation of the simple prefix code.
* if NSYM = 4, the code lengths (in order of symbols decoded)
depend on the tree-select bit: 2, 2, 2, 2 (tree-select bit 0),
or 1, 2, 3, 3 (tree-select bit 1).
3.5. Complex Prefix Codes
A complex prefix code is a canonical prefix code, defined by the
sequence of code lengths, as discussed in Section 3.2. For even
greater compactness, the code length sequences themselves are
compressed using a prefix code. The alphabet for code lengths is as
follows:
0..15: Represent code lengths of 0..15
16: Copy the previous non-zero code length 3..6 times.
The next 2 bits indicate repeat length
(0 = 3, ... , 3 = 6)
If this is the first code length, or all previous
code lengths are zero, a code length of 8 is
repeated 3..6 times.
A repeated code length code of 16 modifies the
repeat count of the previous one as follows:
repeat count = (4 * (repeat count - 2)) +
(3..6 on the next 2 bits)
Example: Codes 7, 16 (+2 bits 11), 16 (+2 bits 10)
will expand to 22 code lengths of 7
(1 + 4 * (6 - 2) + 5)
17: Repeat a code length of 0 for 3..10 times.
The next 3 bits indicate repeat length
(0 = 3, ... , 7 = 10)
A repeated code length code of 17 modifies the
repeat count of the previous one as follows:
repeat count = (8 * (repeat count - 2)) +
(3..10 on the next 3 bits)
Note that a code of 16 that follows an immediately preceding 16
modifies the previous repeat count, which becomes the new repeat
count. The same is true for a 17 following a 17. A sequence of
three or more 16 codes in a row or three of more 17 codes in a row is
possible, modifying the count each time. Only the final repeat count
is used. The modification only applies if the same code follows. A
16 repeat does not modify an immediately preceding 17 count nor vice
versa.
A code length of 0 indicates that the corresponding symbol in the
alphabet will not occur in the compressed data, and it should not
participate in the prefix code construction algorithm given earlier.
A complex prefix code must have at least two non-zero code lengths.
The bit lengths of the prefix code over the code length alphabet are
compressed with the following variable-length code (as it appears in
the compressed data, where the bits are parsed from right to left):
Symbol Code
------ ----
0 00
1 0111
2 011
3 10
4 01
5 1111
We can now define the format of the complex prefix code as follows:
o 2 bits: HSKIP, the number of skipped code lengths, can have values
of 0, 2, or 3. The skipped lengths are taken to be zero. (An
HSKIP of 1 indicates a Simple prefix code.)
o Code lengths for symbols in the code length alphabet given just
above, in the order: 1, 2, 3, 4, 0, 5, 17, 6, 16, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11,
12, 13, 14, 15. If HSKIP is 2, then the code lengths for symbols
1 and 2 are zero, and the first code length is for symbol 3. If
HSKIP is 3, then the code length for symbol 3 is also zero, and
the first code length is for symbol 4.
The code lengths of code length symbols are between 0 and 5, and
they are represented with 2..4 bits according to the variable-
length code above. A code length of 0 means the corresponding
code length symbol is not used.
If HSKIP is 2 or 3, a respective number of leading code lengths
are implicit zeros and are not present in the code length sequence
above.
If there are at least two non-zero code lengths, any trailing zero
code lengths are omitted, i.e., the last code length in the
sequence must be non-zero. In this case, the sum of (32 >> code
length) over all the non-zero code lengths must equal to 32.
If the lengths have been read for the entire code length alphabet
and there was only one non-zero code length, then the prefix code
has one symbol whose code has zero length. In this case, that
symbol results in no bits being emitted by the compressor and no
bits consumed by the decompressor. That single symbol is
immediately returned when this code is decoded. An example of
where this occurs is if the entire code to be represented has
symbols of length 8. For example, a literal code that represents
all literal values with equal probability. In this case the
single symbol is 16, which repeats the previous length. The
previous length is taken to be 8 before any code length code
lengths are read.
o Sequence of code length symbols, which is at most the size of the
alphabet, encoded using the code length prefix code. Any trailing
0 or 17 must be omitted, i.e., the last encoded code length symbol
must be between 1 and 16. The sum of (32768 >> code length) over
all the non-zero code lengths in the alphabet, including those
encoded using repeat code(s) of 16, must be equal to 32768. If
the number of times to repeat the previous length or repeat a zero
length would result in more lengths in total than the number of
symbols in the alphabet, then the stream should be rejected as
invalid.
4. Encoding of Distances
As described in Section 2, one component of a compressed meta-block
is a sequence of backward distances. In this section, we provide the
details to the encoding of distances.
Each distance in the compressed data part of a meta-block is
represented with a pair <distance code, extra bits>. The distance
code and the extra bits are encoded back-to-back, the distance code
is encoded using a prefix code over the distance alphabet, while the
extra bits value is encoded as a fixed-width integer value. The
number of extra bits can be 0..24, and it is dependent on the
distance code.
To convert a distance code and associated extra bits to a backward
distance, we need the sequence of past distances and two additional
parameters: the number of "postfix bits", denoted by NPOSTFIX (0..3),
and the number of direct distance codes, denoted by NDIRECT (0..120).
Both of these parameters are encoded in the meta-block header. We
will also use the following derived parameter:
POSTFIX_MASK = (1 << NPOSTFIX) - 1
The first 16 distance symbols are special symbols that reference past
distances as follows:
0: last distance
1: second-to-last distance
2: third-to-last distance
3: fourth-to-last distance
4: last distance - 1
5: last distance + 1
6: last distance - 2
7: last distance + 2
8: last distance - 3
9: last distance + 3
10: second-to-last distance - 1
11: second-to-last distance + 1
12: second-to-last distance - 2
13: second-to-last distance + 2
14: second-to-last distance - 3
15: second-to-last distance + 3
The ring buffer of the four last distances is initialized by the
values 16, 15, 11, and 4 (i.e., the fourth-to-last is set to 16, the
third-to-last to 15, the second-to-last to 11, and the last distance
to 4) at the beginning of the *stream* (as opposed to the beginning
of the meta-block), and it is not reset at meta-block boundaries.
When a distance symbol 0 appears, the distance it represents (i.e.,
the last distance in the sequence of distances) is not pushed to the
ring buffer of last distances; in other words, the expression
"second-to-last distance" means the second-to-last distance that was
not represented by a 0 distance symbol (and similar for "third-to-
last distance" and "fourth-to-last distance"). Similarly, distances
that represent static dictionary words (see Section 8) are not pushed
to the ring buffer of last distances.
If a special distance symbol resolves to a zero or negative value,
the stream should be rejected as invalid.
If NDIRECT is greater than zero, then the next NDIRECT distance
symbols, from 16 to 15 + NDIRECT, represent distances from 1 to
NDIRECT. Neither the special distance symbols nor the NDIRECT direct
distance symbols are followed by any extra bits.
Distance symbols 16 + NDIRECT and greater all have extra bits, where
the number of extra bits for a distance symbol "dcode" is given by
the following formula:
ndistbits = 1 + ((dcode - NDIRECT - 16) >> (NPOSTFIX + 1))
The maximum number of extra bits is 24; therefore, the size of the
distance symbol alphabet is (16 + NDIRECT + (48 << NPOSTFIX)).
Given a distance symbol "dcode" (>= 16 + NDIRECT), and extra bits
"dextra", the backward distance is given by the following formula:
hcode = (dcode - NDIRECT - 16) >> NPOSTFIX
lcode = (dcode - NDIRECT - 16) & POSTFIX_MASK
offset = ((2 + (hcode & 1)) << ndistbits) - 4
distance = ((offset + dextra) << NPOSTFIX) + lcode + NDIRECT + 1
5. Encoding of Literal Insertion Lengths and Copy Lengths
As described in Section 2, the literal insertion lengths and backward
copy lengths are encoded using a single prefix code. This section
provides the details to this encoding.
Each <insertion length, copy length> pair in the compressed data part
of a meta-block is represented with the following triplet:
<insert-and-copy length code, insert extra bits, copy extra bits>
The insert-and-copy length code, the insert extra bits, and the copy
extra bits are encoded back-to-back, the insert-and-copy length code
is encoded using a prefix code over the insert-and-copy length code
alphabet, while the extra bits values are encoded as fixed-width
integer values. The number of insert and copy extra bits can be
0..24, and they are dependent on the insert-and-copy length code.
Some of the insert-and-copy length codes also express the fact that
the distance symbol of the distance in the same command is 0, i.e.,
the distance component of the command is the same as that of the
previous command. In this case, the distance code and extra bits for
the distance are omitted from the compressed data stream.
We describe the insert-and-copy length code alphabet in terms of the
(not directly used) insert length code and copy length code
alphabets. The symbols of the insert length code alphabet, along
with the number of insert extra bits, and the range of the insert
lengths are as follows:
Extra Extra Extra
Code Bits Lengths Code Bits Lengths Code Bits Lengths
---- ---- ------- ---- ---- ------- ---- ---- -------
0 0 0 8 2 10..13 16 6 130..193
1 0 1 9 2 14..17 17 7 194..321
2 0 2 10 3 18..25 18 8 322..577
3 0 3 11 3 26..33 19 9 578..1089
4 0 4 12 4 34..49 20 10 1090..2113
5 0 5 13 4 50..65 21 12 2114..6209
6 1 6,7 14 5 66..97 22 14 6210..22593
7 1 8,9 15 5 98..129 23 24 22594..16799809
The symbols of the copy length code alphabet, along with the number
of copy extra bits, and the range of copy lengths are as follows:
Extra Extra Extra
Code Bits Lengths Code Bits Lengths Code Bits Lengths
---- ---- ------- ---- ---- ------- ---- ---- -------
0 0 2 8 1 10,11 16 5 70..101
1 0 3 9 1 12,13 17 5 102..133
2 0 4 10 2 14..17 18 6 134..197
3 0 5 11 2 18..21 19 7 198..325
4 0 6 12 3 22..29 20 8 326..581
5 0 7 13 3 30..37 21 9 582..1093
6 0 8 14 4 38..53 22 10 1094..2117
7 0 9 15 4 54..69 23 24 2118..16779333
To convert an insert-and-copy length code to an insert length code
and a copy length code, the following table can be used:
Insert
length Copy length code
code 0..7 8..15 16..23
+----------+----------+
| | |
0..7 | 0..63 | 64..127 | <--- distance symbol 0
| | |
+----------+----------+----------+
| | | |
0..7 | 128..191 | 192..255 | 384..447 |
| | | |
+----------+----------+----------+
| | | |
8..15 | 256..319 | 320..383 | 512..575 |
| | | |
+----------+----------+----------+
| | | |
16..23 | 448..511 | 576..639 | 640..703 |
| | | |
+----------+----------+----------+
First, look up the cell with the 64 value range containing the
insert-and-copy length code; this gives the insert length code and
the copy length code ranges, both 8 values long. The copy length
code within its range is determined by bits 0..2 (counted from the
lsb) of the insert-and-copy length code. The insert length code
within its range is determined by bits 3..5 (counted from the lsb) of
the insert-and-copy length code. Given the insert length and copy
length codes, the actual insert and copy lengths can be obtained by
reading the number of extra bits given by the tables above.
If the insert-and-copy length code is between 0 and 127, the distance
code of the command is set to zero (the last distance reused).
(next page on part 2)
