PSPP-BUG: [bug #20161] support automatic (de)compression for system/portable file I/O

[Ben Pfaff]

Follow-up Comment #4, bug #20161 (project pspp):

>I'm saying that if you pipe through gzip (or any compression 
>tool), then it produces nothing until it's input is closed. 
>Although "you" (pspp) will be reading cases sequentially, the gzip
>process will have to store them all in memory until after the 
>very last one. 

That's not at all true.  You can demonstrate this easily: run "gzip <
/dev/urandom > /dev/null" in one terminal, and "top" in another.  gzip will
use as much CPU as it can get, but its memory consumption is O(1).

>It'll mean for instance that reading/writing will be considerably
>slower, 

Possibly.  I bet it wouldn't be any slower on any mid-range to high-end
computer you buy off-the-shelf this year, though, because all of those are
multi-core.

>and the maximum possible number of cases will be smaller. 

I doubt it.

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