# 13. Data Compression and Archiving

The modules described in this chapter support data compression with the zlib, gzip, bzip2 and lzma algorithms, and the creation of ZIP- and tar-format archives. See also Archiving operations provided by the `shutil` module.

- 13.1. `zlib` — Compression compatible with gzip
- 13.2. `gzip` — Support for gzip files
  - 13.2.1. Examples of usage
- 13.3. `bz2` — Support for bzip2 compression
  - 13.3.1. (De)compression of files
  - 13.3.2. Incremental (de)compression
  - 13.3.3. One-shot (de)compression
- 13.4. `lzma` — Compression using the LZMA algorithm
  - 13.4.1. Reading and writing compressed files
  - 13.4.2. Compressing and decompressing data in memory
  - 13.4.3. Miscellaneous
  - 13.4.4. Specifying custom filter chains
  - 13.4.5. Examples
- 13.5. `zipfile` — Work with ZIP archives
  - 13.5.1. ZipFile Objects
  - 13.5.2. PyZipFile Objects
  - 13.5.3. ZipInfo Objects
- 13.6. `tarfile` — Read and write tar archive files
  - 13.6.1. TarFile Objects
  - 13.6.2. TarInfo Objects
  - 13.6.3. Command Line Interface
    - 13.6.3.1. Command line options
  - 13.6.4. Examples
  - 13.6.5. Supported tar formats
  - 13.6.6. Unicode issues