oxiarc-zstd

Pure Rust implementation of Zstandard (zstd) compression algorithm.

Version: 0.2.3 (2026-03-11) | Tests: 170 passing

Overview

Zstandard is a modern compression algorithm developed by Facebook (Meta), offering excellent compression ratios with fast decompression speeds. It's designed to replace older algorithms like DEFLATE and BZip2 in many applications. Version 0.2.3 includes improvements to the frame, streaming, and core library modules.

Features

• Pure Rust - No C dependencies or unsafe FFI
• Excellent compression ratios - Better than DEFLATE, competitive with BZip2
• Fast decompression - Faster than BZip2, competitive with DEFLATE
• Parallel compression - Multi-threaded block compression with Rayon (parallel feature)
• Dictionary support - Pre-trained dictionaries for better compression
• Checksum support - XXH64 checksums for data integrity
• Streaming API - Incremental encoder/decoder for large data

Quick Start

use oxiarc_zstd::{compress, decompress};

// Compress data
let original = b"Hello, Zstandard! ".repeat(100);
let compressed = compress(&original, 3)?; // Level 3 (default)

// Decompress data
let decompressed = decompress(&compressed)?;
assert_eq!(decompressed, original);

Compression Levels

Parallel Compression

use oxiarc_zstd::compress_parallel;

// Use all available CPU cores (requires `parallel` feature)
let compressed = compress_parallel(&data, 3)?;

API

One-Shot Functions

use oxiarc_zstd::{compress, decompress};

let compressed = compress(data, level)?;
let decompressed = decompress(&compressed)?;

Streaming Compression

use oxiarc_zstd::Encoder;

let mut encoder = Encoder::new(3); // Level 3
encoder.set_checksum(true);
let compressed = encoder.compress(data)?;

Streaming Decompression

use oxiarc_zstd::Decoder;

let mut decoder = Decoder::new();
let decompressed = decoder.decompress(&compressed)?;

Features (Cargo)

[dependencies]
# Default (no parallel)
oxiarc-zstd = "0.2.3"

# With parallel compression
oxiarc-zstd = { version = "0.2.3", features = ["parallel"] }

Algorithm

Zstandard uses a sophisticated multi-stage approach:

1. LZ77 matching - Find repeated sequences
2. Finite State Entropy (FSE) - Advanced entropy coding
3. Huffman coding - For literals
4. Sequence encoding - Efficient match/literal/offset representation
5. Block structure - Independent blocks for parallelization

Frame Format

+------------------+
| Magic Number     | 4 bytes: 0x28 0xB5 0x2F 0xFD
+------------------+
| Frame Header     | Window size, dictionary ID, etc.
+------------------+
| Data Blocks      | Compressed or raw blocks
+------------------+
| Checksum (opt)   | XXH64 checksum
+------------------+

Performance

Typical compression comparison:

Use Cases

• Web assets - Better compression than gzip
• Database storage - Fast decompression for queries
• Network protocols - HTTP/2, HTTP/3
• File systems - Transparent compression (Btrfs, ZFS)
• Container images - Docker, OCI images

Part of OxiArc

This crate is part of the OxiArc project - a Pure Rust archive/compression library ecosystem.

References

• Zstandard RFC 8878
• Zstandard Homepage

License

Apache-2.0