Overview

bzip2 provides PascalAI bindings to libbz2, the classic block-sorting compression library. bzip2 typically achieves 20–30% better compression than gzip at the cost of slower speed, making it a good choice for archiving data where ratio matters more than latency.

Quick Start

uses bzip2;

var original := 'Hello, PascalAI! ' * 1000;
var compressed := Compress(original);
var restored   := Decompress(compressed);

WriteLn('Original:   ', Length(original), ' bytes');
WriteLn('Compressed: ', Length(compressed), ' bytes');
WriteLn('Ratio:      ', Length(compressed)*100 div Length(original), '%');
WriteLn('OK: ', restored = original);

Compress / Decompress

var data := LoadFile('/data/log.txt');

// Default level (6)
var packed := Compress(data);

// Choose level: 1=fast, 9=best ratio
var small  := CompressLevel(data, 9);
var fast   := CompressLevel(data, 1);

var back   := Decompress(packed);

File Compression

// Compress a file → .bz2
CompressFile('/data/dump.sql', '/data/dump.sql.bz2');

// Decompress
DecompressFile('/data/dump.sql.bz2', '/data/dump.sql');

// High-ratio compression for archiving
CompressLevel(ReadFile('/data/logs.txt'), 9);

Base64 Transport

// Compress and encode for JSON / HTTP payloads
var b64 := CompressToBase64(payload);
var back := DecompressFromBase64(b64);

When to Use bzip2