gzcat

gzcat is a command-line utility that outputs the uncompressed contents of a gzip-compressed file to standard output. It is part of the gzip software package and is commonly used as a convenience alias for commands that decompress to stdout, such as zcat or gunzip -c.

On many Unix-like systems, gzcat exists as a separate executable or as a symbolic link to zcat or to gunzip -c. The exact implementation varies by platform (GNU/Linux, BSD, macOS). The effect is the same: it takes a .gz file and prints its uncompressed data to stdout, without writing a decompressed file to disk.

Usage: gzcat file.gz. The command can be piped to other programs, for example gzcat file.gz | less, or used in scripts to supply uncompressed data to another program. It accepts the same options as the underlying decompressor, as it is usually implemented as a wrapper or alias to zcat or gunzip.

Relation to other tools: zcat is the POSIX name for printing compressed files to stdout. gunzip -c is another common way to achieve the same result. Some systems provide both zcat and gzcat, while others provide only one.

See also: zcat, gunzip, gzip. History: The gzip project was developed by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler; gzcat has long been included to provide a convenient stdout-only decompression name on BSD-derived systems.