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authorYann Collet <cyan@fb.com>2019-04-11 22:19:48 (GMT)
committerYann Collet <cyan@fb.com>2019-04-11 22:20:46 (GMT)
commitbcb26565a732062759a2428e167e27ad3c2f6e96 (patch)
tree7b192662cba336b688b23ea04fcd6f48cbb3fc48 /lib/lz4frame.h
parent8d76c8a44a15cc7c0c1f345ba750e44edac7abb7 (diff)
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improved documentation for LZ4 dictionary compression
Diffstat (limited to 'lib/lz4frame.h')
-rw-r--r--lib/lz4frame.h20
1 files changed, 19 insertions, 1 deletions
diff --git a/lib/lz4frame.h b/lib/lz4frame.h
index 2ada8b8..5c68628 100644
--- a/lib/lz4frame.h
+++ b/lib/lz4frame.h
@@ -524,10 +524,28 @@ LZ4FLIB_STATIC_API size_t LZ4F_getBlockSize(unsigned);
/**********************************
* Bulk processing dictionary API
*********************************/
+
+/* A Dictionary is useful for the compression of small messages (KB range).
+ * It dramatically improves compression efficiency.
+ *
+ * LZ4 can ingest any input as dictionary, though only the last 64 KB are useful.
+ * Best results are generally achieved by using Zstandard's Dictionary Builder
+ * to generate a high-quality dictionary from a set of samples.
+ *
+ * Loading a dictionary has a cost, since it involves construction of tables.
+ * The Bulk processing dictionary API makes it possible to share this cost
+ * over an arbitrary number of compression jobs, even concurrently,
+ * markedly improving compression latency for these cases.
+ *
+ * The same dictionary will have to be used on the decompression side
+ * for decoding to be successful.
+ * To help identify the correct dictionary at decoding stage,
+ * the frame header allows optional embedding of a dictID field.
+ */
typedef struct LZ4F_CDict_s LZ4F_CDict;
/*! LZ4_createCDict() :
- * When compressing multiple messages / blocks with the same dictionary, it's recommended to load it just once.
+ * When compressing multiple messages / blocks using the same dictionary, it's recommended to load it just once.
* LZ4_createCDict() will create a digested dictionary, ready to start future compression operations without startup delay.
* LZ4_CDict can be created once and shared by multiple threads concurrently, since its usage is read-only.
* `dictBuffer` can be released after LZ4_CDict creation, since its content is copied within CDict */