[](https://github.com/pierrec/lz4/tags)
## Overview
This package provides a streaming interface to [LZ4 data streams](http://fastcompression.blogspot.fr/2013/04/lz4-streaming-format-final.html) as well as low level compress and uncompress functions for LZ4 data blocks.
The implementation is based on the reference C [one](https://github.com/lz4/lz4).
## Install
Assuming you have the go toolchain installed:
```
go get github.com/pierrec/lz4
```
There is a command line interface tool to compress and decompress LZ4 files.
```
go install github.com/pierrec/lz4/cmd/lz4c
```
Usage
```
Usage of lz4c:
-version
print the program version
Subcommands:
Compress the given files or from stdin to stdout.
compress [arguments] [<filename> ...]
-bc
enable block checksum
-l int
compression level (0=fastest)
-sc
disable stream checksum
-size string
block max size [64K,256K,1M,4M] (default "4M")
Uncompress the given files or from stdin to stdout.
uncompress [arguments] [<filename> ...]
```
## Example
```
// Compress and uncompress an input string.
s := "hello world"
r := strings.NewReader(s)
// The pipe will uncompress the data from the writer.
pr, pw := io.Pipe()
zw := lz4.NewWriter(pw)
zr := lz4.NewReader(pr)
go func() {
// Compress the input string.
_, _ = io.Copy(zw, r)
_ = zw.Close() // Make sure the writer is closed
_ = pw.Close() // Terminate the pipe
}()
_, _ = io.Copy(os.Stdout, zr)
// Output:
// hello world
```
## Contributing
Contributions are very welcome for bug fixing, performance improvements...!
- Open an issue with a proper description
- Send a pull request with appropriate test case(s)
