gzip_write.py

#1/usr/bin/env python

# this is from The Python
# Standard Library by example
# ISBN13: 9780321767349

import gzip
import os

outfilename = 'example.txt.gz'
with gzip.open(outfilename, 'wb') as output:
    output.write('Contents of the esxample file go here. \n')

print outfilename, 'contains', os.stat(outfilename).st_size, 'bytes'
os.system('file -b --mime %s' % outfilename)