Chapter 12. Codec

The term codec originates from the words compression/decompression (amusingly, the abbreviation is in a sense a form of compression). Popular codecs perform such functions as compressing and decompressing arbitrary data (e.g., ZIP, RAR), image-specific data (e.g., GIF, JPEG), or audio data (e.g., MP3, AIFF). Over time, the term codec has grown to include a wide variety of data translations, not all of which are useful for compression and decompression but instead serve other functions such as security, data transmission, or even spell-checking. While the JDK offers a variety of built-in handlers for dealing with popular compression formats such as ZIP, GIF, and JPG, the Apache Commons Codec project fills in other gaps in functionality.

As of this writing, the Codec includes utilities in the following areas: