>> I'm too lazy and tired to read it through, but even the slight look at
>> it tells me why bzip2 ain't "streaming" compression (ie. you'll need the
>> whole file to uncompress it, unlike with gzip).
> 
>   Incorrect. It compresses one block at a time, independently of the others.

Indeed, *most* compression algorithms do this today.

So no, you have to receive at least X bytes of input before you can emit 
any output, but on the other hand you don't need to hold several GB of 
data in memory all at once just to compress it.

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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