Gzip is a file format and software application used for file compression and decompression. It was created in 1992 as a free software replacement for the compress program used in early Unix systems, and is based on the DEFLATE algorithm, which is a combination of LZ77 and Huffman coding.

How to use it in a sentence

• I was trying to download the latest version of Tensorflow, but the gzip file was taking forever to decompress - I should've just used Conda or Docker like all the cool kids.

• She optimized the API's performance by enabling gzip compression, reducing the response size by 70% - pretty impressive for a few lines of code, but I bet she's still using jQuery.

If you actually want to learn more...

• The Gzip Home Page: The official home page of the gzip compression utility, providing information about the software, its history, and its usage.

• Beginner's Guide to Gzip Compression: A beginner-friendly guide explaining how gzip compression works and how to implement it on a website to improve performance.

• Gzip vs Bzip2 vs XZ Performance Comparison: A comparison of the performance and compression ratios of gzip, bzip2, and XZ compression algorithms, for those times when you need to one-up your coworkers in the never-ending battle of optimization.

Note: the Developer Dictionary is in Beta. Please direct feedback to skye@statsig.com.