> >What do I use to open a gz file?
>
> Files suffixed with gz are a GNU Zip compressed file. They
> are uncompressed with the "gunzip" program. So if you have
> a README.gz file you would use the command "gunzip README.gz"
> and that would result in the file README being created.
>
> Many things are compressed in this way to save space.
Including most of the docs in /usr/share/doc. But you shouldn't go around
doing gunzip in there. Many, many utilities can take .gz files directly and
will do an automagical 'gunzip' on them. You have to watch out for the stuff
right before the .gz, as that usually is the file type. A "file.ps.gz" is
actually a ".ps" file which was gzipped, for example.
Examples: zless (to read .txt.gz files. less will read .txt files)
zcat (same as gzip -dc, does a "cat" in a .gz file )
gv (for .ps.gz and .ps files, among others)
Keep in mind that gunziping a .gz file will delete the original .gz file and
create a new file without that .gz (unless you do something like gunzip -c,
which will leave the .gz file alone and write all output to stdout) and
that's not what you want to do in stuff under /usr most of the time.
--
"One disk to rule them all, One disk to find them. One disk to bring
them all and in the darkness grind them. In the Land of Redmond
where the shadows lie." -- The Silicon Valley Tarot
Henrique Holschuh
