CentOS Quick Start Guide

Viewing compressed files

In Linux, we can view the contents of a compressed file without decompressing it. It is a good option to view large log files, which are compressed using this utility. There are multiple utilities that have the letter z prefixed to their name for working with .gzip compressed files.

This table lists some z family commands:

Command	Description
zcat demo.gz	To view a compressed demo.gz file
zless demo.gz or zmore demo.gz	To view a compressed demo.gz file page by page
zgrep -i host demo.gz	To search inside a compressed demo.gz file
zdiff file1.gz file2.gz	To compare two compressed files, file1.gz, and file2.gz, using the diff command
zcmp file1.gz file2.gz	To compare two compressed ...