`zlib.Decompress.flush()` silently returns corrupted output instead of raising `zlib.error`
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@StanFromIreland is already working on this.
Since Aug 21, 2026.
extension-modules
type-bug
- Dominant language
- Python
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Description
Bug report
Bug description:
zlib.Decompress.flush() discards errors returned by inflate(), so corrupt data comes back truncated and garbled with no exception, while decompress() reports this correctly.
>>> import zlib
>>> data = zlib.compress(b'abcdefgh' * 200, 9)
>>> corrupt = data[:15] + bytes(60) # Corrupt the valid stream
>>> d = zlib.decompressobj()
>>> d.decompress(corrupt) # decompress errors correctly
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<python-input-4>", line 1, in <module>
d.decompress(corrupt)
~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^
zlib.error: Error -3 while decompressing data: incorrect data check
>>> d = zlib.decompressobj()
>>> d.decompress(corrupt, 1) # leaving rest uncomsumed
b'a'
>>> d.flush() # no flush, corrupted output
b'bcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdefghabcdeP'
CPython versions tested on:
CPython main branch
Operating systems tested on:
No response
Linked PRs
- gh-156176
- gh-156270
- gh-156271
- gh-156272
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