read‑file‑safe is a tiny Node.js library that wraps the standard filesystem read operations so they never throw; if a file is missing or unreadable the functions simply return `undefined`. It provides both async (`readFile`) and sync (`readFileSync`) helpers with optional buffer output and on‑the‑fly gzip/brotli decompression, making it useful for developers who want cleaner code without repetitive try/catch blocks when reading files.