Compressing Files With Python, Perl, Ruby and Php

Compressing files

is one of the most common tasks any programmer would have done. The below is a simple comparison of compression paradigms of selected programming languages i have really liked!

This post is much influenced by :

• comparative study
• Methods to post to a form

Senario : A list called ‘songs’ with file paths to different songs in the HDD which needs to be compressed to a single zip file.

Ok let the fight begin!

First up is python :

#!/usr/bin/python

import zipfile

""" Open a file called album.zip to write """ 
with zipfile.ZipFile('album.zip', 'w') as zipit:
    """ zipit! """
    for song in songs:
        zipit.write(song)

Lets compress it in perl :

#!/usr/bin/perl

use strict;
use warnings;
use Archive::Zip;

my $compressor = Archive::Zip->new();

foreach my $song (@songs)
{
       $compressor->addFile($song);
}

$compressor->writeToFileNamed('album.zip');

Ok it’s ruby’s turn :****

 #!/usr/bin/ruby

require 'rubygems'
require 'zip/zip'


Zip::ZipFile.open('album.zip', Zip::ZipFile::CREATE) {
        |zipit|
        zipit.get_output_stream(song) { 
            |f| f.puts open(url.chomp).read 
        }
}

PHP you may zip it!

<?php

$zip = new ZipArchive();
$zip->open('album.zip', ZIPARCHIVE::CREATE);
foreach($songs as $song)
{
    $zip->addFile($song,$song);
}
$zip->close();

?>

Indeed there will be better ways of doing the same! Do share it!