title: Python zlib not compressing string?
body: <p>I'm going through the python.org's python tutorial, at the moment.  I'm on 10.9 and I am trying to use the zlib library to compress a string.  However, the <code>len(compressedString)</code> isn't always less than the <code>len(originalString)</code>.  My interpreter code is below:</p>
  <pre><code>&gt;&gt;&gt; import zlib
  &gt;&gt;&gt; s = 'the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; len(s)
  43
  &gt;&gt;&gt; t = zlib.compress(s)
  &gt;&gt;&gt; len(t)
  50
  &gt;&gt;&gt; t
  'x\x9c+\xc9HU(,\xcdL\xceVH*\xca/\xcfSH\xcb\xafP\xc8*\xcd-(V\xc8/K-R(\x01J\xe7$VU*\xa4\xe4\xa7\x03\x00a&lt;\x0f\xfa'
  &gt;&gt;&gt; len(zlib.decompress(t))
  43
  &gt;&gt;&gt; s2 = &quot;something else i'm compressing&quot;
  &gt;&gt;&gt; len(s2)
  30
  &gt;&gt;&gt; t2 = zlib.compress(s2)
  &gt;&gt;&gt; len(t2)
  37
  &gt;&gt;&gt; s3 = &quot;witch which has which witches wrist watch&quot;
  &gt;&gt;&gt; len(s3)
  41
  &gt;&gt;&gt; t3 = zlib.compress(s3)
  &gt;&gt;&gt; len(t3)
  37
  </code></pre>
  <p>Does anyone know why this is happening?</p>