How to compress a directory with the built in .net compression classes?

Question

Using the System.IO.Compression namespaces classes GZIPStream and DeflateStream I successfully can compress and decompress individual files. However, if I pass a directoryna

Answer 1

The classes in System.IO.Compression will only handle streams, yes. You'll have to do file handling yourself. You could, I suppose, use SharpZipLib or similar to tar the files, then compress the resulting tar file. Simple as (untested):

using (Stream out = new FileStream("out.tar", FileMode.CreateNew))
{
    TarArchive archive = TarArchive.CreateOutputTarArchive(outStream
                                    , TarBuffer.DefaultBlockFactor);
    foreach (string name in fileNames)
    {
        TarEntry entry = TarEntry.CreateEntryFromFile(name);
        archive.WriteEntry(entry, true);
    }
}