How do I list contents of a gz file without extracting it in python?

Question

I have a .gz file and I need to get the name of files inside it using python.

This question is the same as this one

The only difference is that

Answer 1

You can't, because Gzip is not an archive format.

That's a bit of a crap explanation on its own, so let me break this down a bit more than I did in the comment...

Its just compression

Being "just a compression system" means that Gzip operates on input bytes (usually from a file) and outputs compressed bytes. You cannot know whether or not the bytes inside represent multiple files or just a single file -- it is just a stream of bytes that has been compressed. That is why you can accept gzipped data over a network, for example. Its bytes_in -> bytes_out.

What's a manifest?

A manifest is a header within an archive that acts as a table of contents for the archive. Note that now I am using the term "archive" and not "compressed stream of bytes". An archive implies that it is a collection of files or segments that are referred to by a manifest -- a compressed stream of bytes is just a stream of bytes.

What's inside a Gzip, anyway?

A somewhat simplified description of a .gz file's contents is:

1. A header with a special number to indicate its a gzip, a version and a timestamp (10 bytes)
2. Optional headers; usually including the original filename (if the compression target was a file)
3. The body -- some compressed payload
4. A CRC-32 checksum at the end (8 bytes)

That's it. No manifest.

Archive formats, on the other hand, will have a manifest inside. That's where the tar library would come in. Tar is just a way to shove a bunch of bits together into a single file, and places a manifest at the front that lets you know the names of the original files and what sizes they were before being concatenated into the archive. Hence, .tar.gz being so common.

There are utilities that allow you to decompress parts of a gzipped file at a time, or decompress it only in memory to then let you examine a manifest or whatever that may be inside. But the details of any manifest are specific to the archive format contained inside.

Note that this is different from a zip archive. Zip is an archive format, and as such contains a manifest. Gzip is a compression library, like bzip2 and friends.

Answer 2

Using the tips from the Mark Adler reply and a bit of inspection on gzip module I've set up this function that extracts the internal filename from gzip files. I noticed that GzipFile objects have a private method called _read_gzip_header() that almost gets the filename so i did based on that

import gzip

def get_gzip_filename(filepath):
    f = gzip.open(filepath)
    f._read_gzip_header()
    f.fileobj.seek(0)
    f.fileobj.read(3)
    flag = ord(f.fileobj.read(1))
    mtime = gzip.read32(f.fileobj)
    f.fileobj.read(2)
    if flag & gzip.FEXTRA:
        # Read & discard the extra field, if present
        xlen = ord(f.fileobj.read(1))
        xlen = xlen + 256*ord(f.fileobj.read(1))
        f.fileobj.read(xlen)
    filename = ''
    if flag & gzip.FNAME:
        while True:
            s = f.fileobj.read(1)
            if not s or s=='\000':
                break
            else:
                filename += s
    return filename or None

Answer 3

As noted in the other answer, your question can only make sense if I take out the plural: "I have a .gz file and I need to get the name of file inside it using python."

A gzip header may or may not have a file name in it. The gzip utility will normally ignore the name in the header, and decompress to a file with the same name as the .gz file, but with the .gz stripped. E.g. your 1.gz would decompress to a file named 1, even if the header has the file name my_latest_data.json in it. The -N option of gzip will use the file name in the header (as well as the time stamp in the header), if there is one. So gzip -dN 1.gz would create the file my_latest_data.json, instead of 1.

You can find the file name in the header in Python by processing the header manually. You can find the details in the gzip specification.

1. Verify that the first three bytes are 1f 8b 08.
2. Save the fourth byte. Call it flags. If flags & 8 is zero, then give up -- there is no file name in the header.
3. Skip the next six bytes.
4. If flags & 2 is not zero, skip two bytes.
5. If flags & 4 is not zero, then read the next two bytes. Considering them to be in little endian order, make an integer out of those two bytes, calling it xlen. Then skip xlen bytes.
6. We already know that flags & 8 is not zero, so you are now at the file name. Read bytes until you get to zero byte. Those bytes up to, but not including the zero byte are the file name.