[doubled112]

Perhaps a tangent, but until now, I've only seen or used "codec" in the audio/video sense. While somehow awkward, it seems this would also be correct, since it also compresses and decompresses. Video codec but archive format.

Sometimes you see a word used a new way and wonder if you've just been wrong all these years.

[heavyset_go]

The defining factor isn't compression/decompression, it's just encoding.

You'll see codec used in things like text encoding.

[deaddodo]

While technically true, the term has been largely co-opted by the A/V realm. It’s pretty rare to hear outside of the context.

[diroussel]

Rare for people who don't deal with encoding and decoding maybe.

To be clear the codec implements the compression (or other encoding) algorithm. So when talking about codec's we mean the implementation. But when talking about the algorithm, we are talking about the standard of encoding the encoder or decoder implements.

[deaddodo]

> Rare for people who don't deal with encoding and decoding maybe.

No, rare in general.

It's a layman's co-opting, and laymen outnumber specialists in every field.

[heavyset_go]

You commonly encounter the term when you want to do bytes to string conversions and vice versa on Python: https://docs.python.org/3/library/codecs.html