ruby - zlib header error when uncompressing tar.gz - ruby

Question

I wanted to write a ruby program to unpackage tar.gz files, and I ran into some issues. After reading the documentation on the ruby-doc site, Zlib::GzipReader and Zlib::Inflate. Then I found this Module someone wrote on GitHub, and that didn't work either. So, using the examples from the Ruby page for Zlib::GzipReader, I these were able to run successfully.
irb(main):027:0* File.open('zlib_inflate.tar.gz') do |f|
irb(main):028:1* gz = Zlib::GzipReader.new(f)
irb(main):029:1> print gz.read
irb(main):030:1> gz.close
irb(main):031:1> end
#
#
#
irb(main):023:0* Zlib::GzipReader.open('zlib_inflate.tar.gz') { |gz|
irb(main):024:1* print gz.read
irb(main):025:1> }
Then, when trying to use the Zlib::Inflate options, I kept running into incorrect header check errors.
irb(main):047:0* zstream = Zlib::Inflate.new
=> #<Zlib::Inflate:0x00000002b15790 #dictionaries={}>
irb(main):048:0> buf = zstream.inflate('zlib_inflate.tar.gz')
Zlib::DataError: incorrect header check
from (irb):48:in `inflate'
from (irb):48
from C:/ruby/Ruby200p353/Ruby200-x64/bin/irb:12:in `<main>'
#
#
#
irb(main):049:0> cf = File.open("zlib_inflate.tar.gz")
=> #<File:zlib_inflate.tar.gz>
irb(main):050:0> ucf = File.open("ruby_inflate.rb", "w+")
=> #<File:ruby_inflate.rb>
irb(main):051:0> zi = Zlib::Inflate.new(Zlib::MAX_WBITS)
=> #<Zlib::Inflate:0x00000002c097f0 #dictionaries={}>
irb(main):052:0> ucf << zi.inflate(cf.read)
Zlib::DataError: incorrect header check
from (irb):52:in `inflate'
from (irb):52
from C:/ruby/Ruby200p353/Ruby200-x64/bin/irb:12:in `<main>'
#
#
#
irb(main):057:0* File.open("zlib_inflate.tar.gz") {|cf|
irb(main):058:1* zi = Zlib::Inflate.new
irb(main):059:1> File.open("zlib_inflate.rb", "w+") {|ucf|
irb(main):060:2* ucf << zi.inflate(cf.read)
irb(main):061:2> }
irb(main):062:1> zi.close
irb(main):063:1> }
Zlib::DataError: incorrect header check
from (irb):60:in `inflate'
from (irb):60:in `block (2 levels) in irb_binding'
from (irb):59:in `open'
from (irb):59:in `block in irb_binding'
from (irb):57:in `open'
from (irb):57
from C:/ruby/Ruby200p353/Ruby200-x64/bin/irb:12:in `<main>'
How would I go about taking a tar.gz file, and extract the contents so the files are not null? I did read this other post about Ruby Zlib from here, but that did not work for me as well. What am I doing wrong?