[Numpy-discussion] NPZ format

[Robert Kern]

On Wed, Sep 29, 2010 at 03:17, Francesc Alted <faltet at pytables.org> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I'm going to give a seminar about serialization, and I'd like to
> describe the .npy format.  I noticed that there is a variant of it
> called .npz that can pack several arrays in one single file.
>
> However, .npz does not use compression at all and I'm wondering what's
> the reason.  I suppose that this is because you don't want to loose the
> possibility to memmap saved arrays, but can someone confirm this?

While I suspect it's possible, I'm certain we don't have any code that
actually does it. Most likely the author assumed that it would be
faster (or tested it to be faster with their CPU/hard disk
configuration) to not compress.

-- 
Robert Kern

"I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless
enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as
though it had an underlying truth."
  -- Umberto Eco