STREAMZIP(1)

💖 STREAMZIP(1) 💖

Okay bestie, welcome to STREAMZIP(1) from the Perl Programmers Reference Guide — it’s giving “pipe your data in, get a zip out, no temp files, no drama.” 🫶

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🌸 NAME 🌸

streamzip — create a zip file from stdin

✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

producer | streamzip [opts] | consumer
producer | streamzip [opts] -zipfile=output.zip

💖 DESCRIPTION 💖

Okay so the whole gig: streamzip reads data from stdin, compresses it into a zip container, and by default writes a streamed zip file to stdout. No temporary files are created. Periodt. 💅

The zip container written to stdout is, by necessity, written in streaming format. Most programs that read Zip files can cope with a streamed zip file, but if interoperability is important, and your workflow allows you to write the zip file directly to disk, you can create a non-streamed zip file using the zipfile option. ✨

🎀 OPTIONS 🎀

Full menu, bestie — every flag stays exactly as written. No skips, no merges, no invented options. 🫶

• -zip64 — Create a Zip64-compliant zip container. Use this option if the input is greater than 4Gig. Default is disabled.
• -zipfile=F — Write zip container to the filename F. Use the Stream option to force the creation of a streamed zip file.
• -member-name=M — This option is used to name the file in the zip container. Default is -.
• -stream — Ignored when writing to stdout. If the zipfile option is specified, including this option will trigger the creation of a streamed zip file. Default: Always enabled when writing to stdout, otherwise disabled.
• -method=M — Compress using method M. Valid method names are:
  • store — Store without compression
  • deflate — Use Deflate compression [Default]
  • bzip2 — Use Bzip2 compression
  • lzma — Use LZMA compression
  • xz — Use xz compression
  • zstd — Use Zstandard compression

Note that Lzma compress needs IO::Compress::Lzma to be installed.

Note that Zstd compress needs IO::Compress::Zstd to be installed.

Default is deflate.

• -0, -1, -2, -3, -4, -5, -6, -7, -8, -9 — Sets the compression level for deflate. Ignored for all other compression methods. -0 means no compression and -9 for maximum compression. Default is 6.
• -version — Display version number.
• -help — Display help.

🌈 Examples 🌈

First up, the page says: Create a zip file bt reading daa from stdin — yes, that’s the exact wording, and we respect the lore. 😌

$ echo Lorem ipsum dolor sit | perl ./bin/streamzip >abcd.zip

Check the contents of abcd,zip with the standard unzip utility:

Archive:  abcd.zip
  Length      Date    Time    Name
---------  ---------- -----   ----
       22  2021-01-08 19:45   -
---------                     -------
       22                     1 file

Notice how the Name is set to - — that’s the default for a few zip utilities when the member name isn’t given. 🎀

If you want to explicitly name the file, use the -member-name option as follows:

$ echo Lorem ipsum dolor sit | perl ./bin/streamzip -member-name latin >abcd.zip

$ unzip -l abcd.zip
Archive:  abcd.zip
  Length      Date    Time    Name
---------  ---------- -----   ----
       22  2021-01-08 19:47   latin
---------                     -------
       22                     1 file

🦋 When to write a Streamed Zip File 🦋

A Streamed Zip File is useful in situations where you cannot seek backwards/forwards in the file. 🔥

A good example is when you’re serving dynamic content from a Web Server straight into a socket without needing to create a temporary zip file in the filesystem. Literally iconic for pipelines. 🌈

Similarly if your workflow uses a Linux pipelined commands. 🐧✨

🫶 SUPPORT 🫶

General feedback/questions/bug reports should be sent to https://github.com/pmqs/IO-Compress/issues (preferred) or https://rt.cpan.org/Public/Dist/Display.html?Name=IO-Compress.

👑 AUTHOR 👑

Paul Marquess pmqs@cpan.org. Main character energy, no cap. 💜

⭐ COPYRIGHT ⭐

Copyright (c) 2019-2026 Paul Marquess. All rights reserved.

This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

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Source/version check, bestie: perl v5.42.3, dated 2026-11-03 — that’s the whole page, now go make some zip files and slay 💅✨