Re: *.gz

[Jimmy Richards <linuxrh@home.com>]

Carl Greco wrote:

> Chad C. Walstrom writes:
> >On Fri, Feb 23, 2001 at 01:32:41PM -0300, Marcelo Chiapparini wrote:
> >> this is a very elemental question: how can I read a text file which
> >> is gzipped?  Al documentation files are stored in this way... eg
> >> README.gz
> >
> >Why do people suggest using things like mc(1)?  What if Marcelo hasn't
> >installed midnight commander?  Let's instead suggest he learns about
> >the tools on the system instead of learning about crutches such as mc.
> >
> >Marcelo, *.gz files are compressed files created with the gzip(1)
> >tool.  When you see people referring to an application like I referred
> >to gzip above, it means that there is a manpage -- aka manual page --
> >available.  You can view the manpage with the man(1) command.
> >
> >Now, go take a look at gzip(1), as gunzip(1) shows you the same
> >manpage.  gunzip is a simple "wrapper" for
> >
> >    bash$ gzip -cd <file.gz>
> >
> >The nice thing about shells and UNIX in general is that you can
> >redirect the input into pager's you're familiar with, such as more(1),
> >less(1), most(1), or even vi(1), my favorite editor.
> >
> >    bash$ gzip -cd file.gz | more
> >
> >Notice the pipe ('|').  You can read about redirection of standard
> >input (stdin), standard output (stdout), and standard error (stderr),
> >in the manpage for the shell that you are using.  Debian installs with
> >bash(1) as your default shell, so that would be a good place to start.
> >
> >Someone mentioned the use of zless.  This is a way of calling less(1),
> >a popular pager, to automatically decompress the file.  Essentially,
> >zless does the following:
> >
> >    bash$ gzip -cd file.gz | less
>
> zless is a keystroke saver, but it only handles "*.gz" files.  With
> the preprocessor feature of less it can be made to handle *.deb, *.bz2
> and other compression types as well.  A "lesspipe" script has been
> attached that can do these.  Thus typing
>          less <package>.deb
> will list the contents of the deb package.  You will need to define
> the environmental variable "LESSOPEN", i.e., for csh|tcsh
>
> setenv LESSOPEN "| ~/bin/lesspipe %s"
>
> Of course "lesspipe" must be made excutable.
>
> >
> >Cool, huh?  Say you want to email someone the uncompressed version of
> >that file.  Given that you've set up sendmail(1), smail(1), or other
> >Mail Transfer Agent (MTA).  You can do stuff like this:
> >
> >    bash$ gzip -cd file.gz | mailx -s 'Here is the file...' friend@there.com
> >
> >And thus you see the beauty of the UNIX philosophy: "Everything is a
> >filter."
> >
> >The next place for you to look for information is in the document
> >directories:
> >
> >    /usr/share/doc/<package>
> >
> >So go look there for stuff on: gzip, more, less, bash, etc...
> >
> >Have fun!
> >
> >--
> >Chad Walstrom <chewie@wookimus.net>                 | a.k.a. ^chewie
> >http://www.wookimus.net/                            | s.k.a. gunnarr
> >Key fingerprint = B4AB D627 9CBD 687E 7A31  1950 0CC7 0B18 206C 5AFD
> >
>
>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>                   Name: lesspipe
>    lesspipe       Type: unspecified type (application/octet-stream)
>               Encoding: base64
>            Description: lesspipe
>
>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> --
>     Carl Greco
>     cgreco@novia.net

Hi there,

Don't know if anypne has mentioned 'zcat'. I use    zcat <file.gz> | less   to
view a .gz myself.

Hope that helps.

Jimmy Richards