Grep compressed (.gz) files at a shell prompt

Posted by Vivek Gite [Last updated: January 29, 2008]

Q. I've lots of .gz files in my directory and I'd like to search them using grep. Unfortunately, grep is not working on my compressed file How do I write a script to automate entire procedure to grep some compressed files. Do I have to uncompress them first and run grep over them?

A. No you don't have to uncompress file. Linux and UNIX comes with z-commands. zgrep invokes grep on compressed or gzipped files. All options specified are passed directly to grep.

To search .gz file called test.gz, enter:
$ zgrep 'word-to-search' /path/to/test.gz $ zgrep 'GET /faq/a-long-url/' /path/to/access.log.gz

You can run zcat command to display file on screen:
$ zcat file.gz

Update: See list of all z-commands

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