Zlib:deflateSetDictionary

Initializes the compression dictionary from the given byte sequence without producing any compressed output. This function must be called immediately after deflateInit, deflateInit2 or deflateReset, before any call of deflate. The compressor and decompressor must use exactly the same dictionary (see inflateSetDictionary). without producing any compressed output. When using the zlib format, this function must be called immediately after deflateInit, deflateInit2 or deflateReset, and before any call of deflate. When doing raw deflate, this function must be called either before any call of deflate, or immediately after the completion of a deflate block, i.e. after all input has been consumed and all output has been delivered when using any of the flush options Z_BLOCK, Z_PARTIAL_FLUSH, Z_SYNC_FLUSH, or Z_FULL_FLUSH. The compressor and decompressor must use exactly the same dictionary (see inflateSetDictionary).

The dictionary should consist of strings (byte sequences) that are likely to be encountered later in the data to be compressed, with the most commonly used strings preferably put towards the end of the dictionary. Using a dictionary is most useful when the data to be compressed is short and can be predicted with good accuracy; the data can then be compressed better than with the default empty dictionary.

Depending on the size of the compression data structures selected by deflateInit or deflateInit2, a part of the dictionary may in effect be discarded, for example if the dictionary is larger than the window size in deflate or deflate2. Thus the strings most likely to be useful should be put at the end of the dictionary, not at the front. In addition, the current implementation of deflate will use at most the window size minus 262 bytes of the provided dictionary.

Upon return of this function, strm->adler is set to the adler32 value of the dictionary; the decompressor may later use this value to determine which dictionary has been used by the compressor. (The adler32 value applies to the whole dictionary even if only a subset of the dictionary is actually used by the compressor.) If a raw deflate was requested, then the adler32 value is not computed and strm->adler is not set.

deflateSetDictionary returns Z_OK if success, or Z_STREAM_ERROR if a parameter is invalid (such as NULL dictionary) or the stream state is inconsistent (for example if deflate has already been called for this stream or if not at a block boundary for raw deflate). deflateSetDictionary does not perform any compression: this will be done by deflate.