TAR.ZST — intentionally corrupt frame header
Tiny intentionally corrupt TAR.ZST with preserved Zstandard magic and a deliberately damaged frame-header byte so strict decompressors reject it before extraction Stable P8 artifact p8-convert-tar-zst-intentionally-corrupt.
- README.txt
- points.csv
Specifications
- Members
- 2
- Delivery Mode
- download-only
- Compression
- Zstandard
- Validity
- intentionally corrupt
- Corruption
- frame header byte 5 XOR 0xFF
- Zstandard Magic Preserved
- true
- Provider
- converter-v2
- Provenance
- Synthetic deterministic P8 fixture generated by generation/p8_content.py; seed namespace 2026082300
- Fixture Reserve
- convert-v2
Testing contract
Expected to fail- Scenario
- Attempt bounded Zstandard decompression and stop before TAR extraction when frame-header corruption is reported.
- Expected result
- Decompression fails with a frame-corruption error; no member is written and the input remains below the per-file safety limit.
What is a .tar.zst file?
TAR.ZST combines a POSIX tar member stream with Zstandard compression. The outer Zstandard frame must be decompressed before 512-byte tar headers, file payloads, padding, checksums, and end blocks can be interpreted; concatenated frames and long-path extensions make robust implementations treat compression and archive parsing as separate stages.
How to use this file
Use an example .tar.zst file to test streaming decompression, tar checksum and member parsing, path-traversal rejection, bounded expansion, deterministic member manifests, and clean failure on a deliberately truncated Zstandard frame.
How to use this file for testing
“TAR.ZST — intentionally corrupt frame header” is a deterministic Novus Examples fixture for Conversion testing, Compression testing. The same content exported across many formats and linked as a group, so you can convert one and diff against the expected twin.
Documented properties for this file: TAR.ZST · 157 bytes. Compare results against paired or grouped companions on this page when present (clean↔damaged, searchable↔scanned, or format twins) so scores stay reproducible across runs.
Download the file once, keep the path stable in CI or local scripts, and treat the spec table as the contract: dimensions, seeds, field lists, and roles are intentional. Corrupt or invalid samples are labelled as such — expect parsers to fail loudly rather than silently accept them.
Archive fixtures are documented down to their member list (shown on this page) and are deliberately safe — no zip bombs, executables, or hidden payloads. Test extractors against nested, unicode, empty, and encrypted variants.
Related files
- lz4LZ4 — Single FileA text file compressed with the LZ4 frame format (.lz4) — the container-free codec on its own — for testing LZ4 decompression and codec detection.
- tarTAR Containing Three ZIP ArchivesA tar carrying three ZIPs: two byte-identical and a third holding the same content stored rather than deflated. A deduplicating packer should notice the first two are the same object; a content-addressed one should notice all three extract to the same files.
- tbz2TBZ2 - Empty ArchiveThe empty tar under bzip2. Its payload is 1024 identical bytes, which is the run-length case bzip2's block sorter treats specially, so this doubles as the smallest sane bzip2 stream to test a decoder against.
- tgzTGZ Containing a TGZA gzipped tar whose second member is another gzipped tar. Tools that apply decompression greedily - gunzip until the bytes stop being gzip - skip straight past the outer tar and report the inner archive's two members as if they were the whole thing.
- zipZIP - All Members DeflateA ZIP whose every member uses compression method 8 (deflate). Its twin holds byte-identical content under the other method, so an extractor, a size estimator, or a repacking pipeline can be compared on the same payload with only the storage method changed.
- zipZIP - All Members StoredA ZIP whose every member uses compression method 0 (stored). Its twin holds byte-identical content under the other method, so an extractor, a size estimator, or a repacking pipeline can be compared on the same payload with only the storage method changed.
Generated by generation/p8_content.py. Free for any use, no attribution required — license.