Snappy is a compression/decompression library. It does not aim for
maximum compression, or compatibility with any other compression
library; instead, it aims for very high speeds and reasonable
compression. For instance, compared to the fastest mode of zlib,
Snappy is an order of magnitude faster for most inputs, but the
resulting compressed files are anywhere from 20% to 100% bigger. (For
more information, see "Performance", below.)
Snappy has the following properties:
* Fast: Compression speeds at 250 MB/sec and beyond, with no assembler
code. See "Performance" below.
* Stable: Over the last few years, Snappy has compressed and
decompressed petabytes of data in Google's production environment. The
Snappy bitstream format is stable and will not change between
versions.
* Robust: The Snappy decompressor is designed not to crash in the face
of corrupted or malicious input.
* Free and open source software: Snappy is licensed under a BSD-type
license. For more information, see the included COPYING file.
Snappy has previously been called "Zippy" in some Google presentations
and the like.
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