[Python-3000] Providing compress/uncompress functions in gzip

[Anand Balachandran Pillai]

Python has great in-built support for all sorts of text compression
including bzip, gzip, tarfile and other general purpose modules like
zlib etc.

Of these, I have a gripe with gzip - it does not provide a simple
way of compressing/uncompressing a string like the other modules
to (namely bzip, zlib) at the module level.

It is relatively easy to perform gzip de-compression using the
GzipFile class and StringIO objects, but compression is not
that straight-forward.

It would be great for the gzip module to have "compress"
and "uncompress" functions at the module level without having
to go through GzipFile every-time.

If it is not too late in the dev-cycle, please consider this.

Thanks

-- 
-Anand