work with compressed files without extracting

17th Nov 2025 Linux

Sometimes we need to read the content of compressed files without extracting them, especially when dealing with large documents like plain text logs. In this case the amount of time and resources taken for decompression can be bothersome. The appropriate tools are located in /bin directory :

ls /bin/z*

Command	Description
zcat	Displays compressed files (like .gz) to stdout, similar to cat but for compressed files.
zdump	Prints the current time in each timezone specified or all timezones if none are given.
zenity	Displays GTK+ dialog boxes for shell scripts (e.g., file selection, progress bars, messages).
zgrep	Searches for patterns in compressed files (like grep, but works on .gz files).
zipdetails	Displays detailed information about a ZIP file’s internal structure.
zipnote	Edits comments in a ZIP file.
zless	Views compressed files (like .gz) interactively, similar to less.
zstd	A fast lossless compression tool and format (zstandard).
zstdless	Views files compressed with zstd, similar to less.
zcmp	Compares compressed files (like cmp, but works on .gz files).
zegrep	Searches for patterns in compressed files, using extended regular expressions (like egrep).
zfgrep	Searches for fixed strings in compressed files (like fgrep).
zip	Package and compress files into a ZIP archive.
zipgrep	Searches for patterns in files within a ZIP archive (like grep).
zipsplit	Splits a ZIP archive into smaller archives of a specified size.
zmore	Views compressed files (like .gz) page by page, similar to more.
zstdcat	Decompresses and concatenates zstd-compressed files to stdout.
zstdmt	Multi-threaded version of zstd for faster compression/decompression.
zdiff	Compares compressed files line by line (like diff, but works on .gz files).
zeisstopnm	Converts Zeisstop image files to portable anymap (PNM) format.
zforce	Forces a .gz extension on all gzipped files in the current directory.
zipcloak	Encrypts files in a ZIP archive (note: weak encryption, use with caution).
zipinfo	Lists detailed information about files in a ZIP archive.
zjsdecode	Decodes files encoded with the JS encoding (used in some web contexts).
znew	Recompresses .Z files to .gz format for better compression.
zstdgrep	Searches for patterns in zstd-compressed files (like grep).