disabled ea> parameter. This has the same behaviour as the C built-in. Returns true if successful. =head2 printf Usage is $z->printf($format, $data) printf $z $format, $data Compresses and outputs the contents of the C<$data> parameter. Returns true if successful. =head2 syswrite Usage is $z->syswrite $data $z->syswrite $data, $length $z->syswrite $data, $length, $offset Compresses and outputs the contents of the C<$data> parameter. Returns the number of uncompressed bytes written, or C if unsuccessful. =head2 write Usage is $z->write $data $z->write $data, $length $z->write $data, $length, $offset Compresses and outputs the contents of the C<$data> parameter. Returns the number of uncompressed bytes written, or C if unsuccessful. =head2 flush Usage is $z->flush; $z->flush($flush_type); Flushes any pending compressed data to the output file/buffer. This method takes an optional parameter, C<$flush_type>, that controls how the flushing will be carried out. By default the C<$flush_type> used is C. Other valid values for C<$flush_type> are C, C, C and C. It is strongly recommended that you only set the C parameter if you fully understand the implications of what it does - overuse of C can seriously degrade the level of compression achieved. See the C documentation for details. Returns true on success. =head2 tell Usage is $z->tell() tell $z Returns the uncompressed file offset. =head2 eof Usage is $z->eof(); eof($z); Returns true if the C method has been called. =head2 seek $z->seek($position, $whence); seek($z, $position, $whence); Provides a sub-set of the C functionality, with the restriction that it is only legal to seek forward in the output file/buffer. It is a fatal error to attempt to seek backward. Empty parts of the file/buffer will have NULL (0x00) bytes written to them. The C<$whence> parameter takes one the usual values, namely SEEK_SET, SEEK_CUR or SEEK_END. Returns 1 on success, 0 on failure. =head2 binmode Usage is $z->binmode binmode $z ; This is a noop provided for completeness. =head2 opened $z->opened() Returns true if the object currently refers to a opened file/buffer. =head2 autoflush my $prev = $z->autoflush() my $prev = $z->autoflush(EXPR) If the C<$z> object is associated with a file or a filehandle, this method returns the current autoflush setting for the underlying filehandle. If C is present, and is non-zero, it will enable flushing after every write/print operation. If C<$z> is associated with a buffer, this method has no effect and always returns C. B that the special variable C<$|> B be used to set or retrieve the autoflush setting. =head2 input_line_number $z->input_line_number() $z->input_line_number(EXPR) This method always returns C when compressing. =head2 fileno $z->fileno() fileno($z) If the C<$z> object is associated with a file or a filehandle, C will return the underlying file descriptor. Once the C method is called C will return C. If the C<$z> object is associated with a buffer, this method will return C. =head2 close $z->close() ; close $z ; Flushes any pending compressed data and then closes the output file/buffer. For most versions of Perl this method will be automatically invoked if the IO::Compress::Deflate object is destroyed (either explicitly or by the variable with the reference to the object going out of scope). The exceptions are Perl versions 5.005 through 5.00504 and 5.8.0. In these cases, the C method will be called automatically, but not until global destruction of all live objects when the program is terminating. Therefore, if you want your scripts to be able to run on all versions of Perl, you should call C explicitly and not rely on automatic closing. Returns true on success, otherwise