What is the best compression algorithm that allows

Question

What is the best compression algorithm that allows random reads/writes in a file?

I know that any adaptive compression algorithms would be out of the question.

And I know huffman encoding would be out of the question.

Does anyone have a better compression algorithm that would allow random reads/writes?

I think you could use any compression algorithm if you write it in blocks, but ideally I would not like to have to decompress a whole block at a time. But if you have suggestions on an easy way to do this and how to know the block boundaries, please let me know. If this is part of your solution, please also let me know what you do when the data you want to read is across a block boundary?

In the context of your answers please assume the file in question is 100GB, and sometimes I'll want to read the first 10 bytes, and sometimes I'll want to read the last 19 bytes, and sometimes I'll want to read 17 bytes in the middle. .

Answer 1

A dictionary-based compression scheme, with each dictionary entry's code being encoded with the same size, will result in being able to begin reading at any multiple of the code size, and writes and updates are easy if the codes make no use of their context/neighbors.

If the encoding includes a way of distinguishing the start or end of codes then you do not need the codes to be the same length, and you can start reading anywhere in the middle of the file. This technique is more useful if you're reading from an unknown position in a stream.