zcat

zcat is a command-line utility used on many Unix-like systems to display the contents of gzip-compressed files without creating an uncompressed copy on disk. It writes the decompressed data to standard output, making it convenient to view or pipe the contents of .gz files. It is functionally equivalent to running gzip -cd file.gz or gunzip -c file.gz.

Implementation and availability: zcat is provided by the gzip software package. On GNU/Linux systems it is commonly a symbolic link to gzip or implemented as a small wrapper that invokes gzip -cd. In some BSD-derived systems and macOS, an equivalent utility named gzcat may exist, and zcat may be linked to that program. Regardless of the exact binary, the effect is the same: decompress to stdout.

Usage: zcat takes one or more gzip-compressed files as arguments and outputs the uncompressed data to standard output. If multiple files are specified, their decompressed contents are concatenated in order. The typical workflow is to pipe the output to another program, such as a pager or a file, for example: zcat file.gz | less or zcat file1.gz file2.gz > combined.txt. If a file is not in gzip format, zcat typically reports an error.

See also: gzip, gunzip, gzcat, zless, zmore.