Python: Essential Reference, Third Edition

gzip

The gzip module provides a class, GzipFile, that can be used to read and write files compatible with the GNU gzip program. GzipFile objects work like ordinary files except that data is automatically compressed or decompressed.

GzipFile([filename [, mode [, compresslevel [, fileobj]]]])

Opens a GzipFile. filename is the name of a file, and mode is one of 'r', 'rb', 'a', 'ab', 'w', or 'wb'. The default is 'rb'. compresslevel is an integer from 1 to 9 that controls the level of compression. 1 is the fastest and produces the least compression; 9 is the slowest and produces the most compression (the default). fileobj is an existing file object that should be used. If supplied, it’s used instead of the file named by filename.

open(filename ...