Architecture¶
A high-level tour of the C core. For algorithm specifics, see Algorithms. For the byte-level format, see the MSZ spec.
flowchart TB
A["mzML file"]
A --> B["preprocess.c<br/>scan, divide, parse data_format"]
B --> C["divisions_t<br/>spectrum → byte ranges"]
C --> D["compress.c<br/>thread pool"]
D --> E1["XML stream<br/>(ZSTD)"]
D --> E2["m/z stream<br/>(algo + ZSTD)"]
D --> E3["Intensity stream<br/>(algo + ZSTD)"]
E1 --> F["file.c<br/>header + footer"]
E2 --> F
E3 --> F
F --> G[".msz file"]The C source lives in src/, the CLI in cli/, and vendor libraries in
vendor/. The complete public API is in src/mscompress.h.
Source tree¶
| File | Role |
|---|---|
src/mscompress.h |
All type definitions and function declarations |
src/preprocess.c |
mzML parsing (yxml), file division, format detection |
src/compress.c |
Multi-threaded compression pipeline |
src/decompress.c |
Multi-threaded decompression |
src/extract.c |
Spectrum extraction with index-based filtering |
src/algo.c |
Algorithm registry and dispatch |
src/algos/ |
One file per algorithm family |
src/encode.c / src/decode.c |
Base64 and zlib wrappers for the inner encoding chain |
src/queue.c |
Block-length and compressed-block queue management |
src/file.c |
I/O, mmap, header/footer (de)serialization |
src/mem.c |
Allocation helpers for data blocks |
src/zl.c |
zlib wrappers |
src/arguments.c |
Argument parsing and validation |
src/sys.c |
Platform glue (threads, CPU count) |