Problem when streaming out a binary file

Question

Hi,
I am trying to stream out a binary file to an output stream (not a file, but a socket). My file is a gzip file, and I was initially simply trying to open the
file, read it to a a byte array, and writing it out to my output stream. However, I got corrupted data at my other end and it took me quite a bit of
debugging hours to find out why.
I tried writing to a file the same information I was writing to my output stream but, although my file was correct, my output stream still contained
corrupted data.
I think I have finally narrowed down my problem to the fact that when I try to write a 0x00 value to my output stream, everything gets ignored from this
point until I write a 0x0a byte to my output stream. Obviously this produces corrupted data, since I need all the bytes of my binary file.
If somebody can direct me as to how to write a 0x00 value to a socket output stream, I would really appreciate your input.
This is a sample of my code (Right now I am writing byte by byte: not very efficient, but was the only way I found where I was getting a problem):
// out is of type OutputStream
if (Zipped){
     // In this case we just have to stream the file out
File myFile = new File(fileName);
     FileInputStream inputFile = new FileInputStream(myFile);
     FileOutputStream fos = new FileOutputStream(new File("/tmp/zip.gz")); //zip.gz results in a good (not corrupted) file.
     ByteArrayOutputStream out1 = new ByteArrayOutputStream(1024);
     int bytes = (int)myFile.length();
     byte[] buffer = new byte[bytes];
     bytes = inputFile.read(buffer);
     while (bytes != -1) {
          out1.write(buffer,0,bytes);
          bytes = inputFile.read(buffer);
     inputFile.close();
     try {
          int count=0;
          bytes=out1.size();
          while (count<bytes){
               fos.write(buffer,count,1);
out.write(buffer,count,1); // when buffer[count] == 0x00, everything after it gets ignored until a 0x0a byte is written.
               count++;
     } catch (IOException ioe) {
          SysLog.event("IOEXCEPTION: "+ioe);
     } catch (Exception e) {
          SysLog.event("EXCEPTION: "+e);
     fos.flush();
     fos.close();
     out.flush();
out.close();
     return;
}

Answer 1

Actually, I had thought about that and for some time I tried getting rid of some of the header information in the gzipped file, and then I stopped doing that when I realized that part of the gzipped file is a CRC value which I believe is computed taking into account both the data of the file and the header information. If this is the case, then getting rid of part of the header would produce a corrupted file ... but then, I might be wrong in this issue.
Anyway, to make my application more clear, what I am doing is writing the code for a cgi command which is suppossed to access information from a database, create an xml file, gzip it, and then send it to the client who requested the information.
Therefore, what I am sending is an xml file (Content-Type: text/xml) in compressed format (Content-Encoding: gzip). Note that if I don't gzip the file and then send it uncompressed to the client, I have no problems. However, for me it is very important to gzip it because the size of the file can get very large and that would just take bandwidth unnecessarily.
On the other hand, if I try to gunzip the file locally, I have no problem either (the file is not corrupt at the server's end). Therefore, my problem is when I stream it out.
Any further help would be really appreciated!