inflateBack() does a raw inflate with a single call using a call-back interface for input and output. This is more efficient than inflate() for file i/o applications in that it avoids copying between the output and the sliding window by simply making the window itself the output buffer. This function trusts the application to not change the output buffer passed by the output function, at least until inflateBack() returns.

inflateBackInit() must be called first to allocate the internal state and to initialize the state with the user-provided window buffer. inflateBack() may then be used multiple times to inflate a complete, raw deflate stream with each call. inflateBackEnd() is then called to free the allocated state.

A raw deflate stream is one with no zlib or gzip header or trailer. This routine would normally be used in a utility that reads zip or gzip files and writes out uncompressed files. The utility would decode the header and process the trailer on its own, hence this routine expects only the raw deflate stream to decompress. This is different from the normal behavior of inflate(), which expects either a zlib or gzip header and trailer around the deflate stream.

inflateBack() uses two subroutines supplied by the caller that are then called by inflateBack() for input and output. inflateBack() calls those routines until it reads a complete deflate stream and writes out all of the uncompressed data, or until it encounters an error. The function's parameters and return types are defined above in the in_func and out_func typedefs. inflateBack() will call in(in_desc, &buf) which should return the number of bytes of provided input, and a pointer to that input in buf. If there is no input available, in() must return zero--buf is ignored in that case--and inflateBack() will return a buffer error. inflateBack() will call out(out_desc, buf, len) to write the uncompressed data buf[0..len-1]. out() should return zero on success, or non-zero on failure. If out() returns non-zero, inflateBack() will return with an error. Neither in() nor out() are permitted to change the contents of the window provided to inflateBackInit(), which is also the buffer that out() uses to write from. The length written by out() will be at most the window size. Any non-zero amount of input may be provided by in().

For convenience, inflateBack() can be provided input on the first call by setting strm->next_in and strm->avail_in. If that input is exhausted, then in() will be called. Therefore strm->next_in must be initialized before calling inflateBack(). If strm->next_in is Z_NULL, then in() will be called immediately for input. If strm->next_in is not Z_NULL, then strm->avail_in must also be initialized, and then if strm->avail_in is not zero, input will initially be taken from strm->next_in[0 .. strm->avail_in - 1].

The in_desc and out_desc parameters of inflateBack() is passed as the first parameter of in() and out() respectively when they are called. These descriptors can be optionally used to pass any information that the caller- supplied in() and out() functions need to do their job.

On return, inflateBack() will set strm->next_in and strm->avail_in to pass back any unused input that was provided by the last in() call. The return values of inflateBack() can be Z_STREAM_END on success, Z_BUF_ERROR if in() or out() returned an error, Z_DATA_ERROR if there was a format error in the deflate stream (in which case strm->msg is set to indicate the nature of the error), or Z_STREAM_ERROR if the stream was not properly initialized. In the case of Z_BUF_ERROR, an input or output error can be distinguished using strm->next_in which will be Z_NULL only if in() returned an error. If strm->next is not Z_NULL, then the Z_BUF_ERROR was due to out() returning non-zero. (in() will always be called before out(), so strm->next_in is assured to be defined if out() returns non-zero.) Note that inflateBack() cannot return Z_OK.