Reading gz files with zcat

| linux | tui |

The Debian Policy Manual dictates that all packages should come with documentation. In order to save space in the debian archive these documents need to be compressed with gzip. There are a ton of these files floating around in the /usr/share/doc directory. Recently I wanted to read some of the documentation. If you try to open the file with cat it spits out binary gibberish. You can of course unzip the file as you normally would and open it up that way, but it turns out there is an easier way. Using zcat you can read the contents of compressed files just like you would with cat.

zcat is identical to gunzip -c. (On some systems, zcat may be installed as gzcat to preserve the original link to compress.) zcat uncompresses either a list of files on the command line or its standard input and writes the uncompressed data on standard output. zcat will uncompress files that have the correct magic number whether they have a .gz suffix or not. GZIP(1) man page.
By default, this will put all of the output into your terminal window, which is fine for most files. The other place where this can come in handy is when you are trying to look through compressed log files. In this case, having to scroll around the terminal may not be a great option. You can pipe the output of zcat into other programs such asless in order to be able to page through long files. For example, if I wanted to read the first 10 lines of a compressed log file, I could do so with the following command:
levlaz@debvm:/var/log$ sudo zcat syslog.2.gz | head -n 10
The output of this command would look like this:
May  2 22:27:43 debvm rsyslogd: [origin software="rsyslogd" swVersion="8.4.2" x-pid="585" x-info="https://www.rsyslog.com"] start
May  2 22:27:43 debvm kernel: [    0.000000] ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x1a] high edge lint[0x1])
May  2 22:27:43 debvm kernel: [    0.000000] ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x1b] high edge lint[0x1])
May  2 22:27:43 debvm kernel: [    0.000000] ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x1c] high edge lint[0x1])
May  2 22:27:43 debvm kernel: [    0.000000] ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x1d] high edge lint[0x1])
May  2 22:27:43 debvm kernel: [    0.000000] ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x1e] high edge lint[0x1])
May  2 22:27:43 debvm kernel: [    0.000000] ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x1f] high edge lint[0x1])
May  2 22:27:43 debvm kernel: [    0.000000] ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x20] high edge lint[0x1])
May  2 22:27:43 debvm kernel: [    0.000000] ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x21] high edge lint[0x1])
May  2 22:27:43 debvm kernel: [    0.000000] ACPI: LAPIC_NMI (acpi_id[0x22] high edge lint[0x1])

Thank you for reading! Share your thoughts with me on bluesky, mastodon, or via email.

Check out some more stuff to read down below.

Most popular posts this month

Recent Favorite Blog Posts

This is a collection of the last 8 posts that I bookmarked.

Articles from blogs I follow around the net

Pluralistic: Demand destruction vs fuel-superceding infrastructure (04 May 2026)

Today's links Demand destruction vs fuel-superceding infrastructure: Will Trump hormuz us into the full Gretacene? Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Beck, Scientologist; Citizen journalism; Podcast-killing treaty; US x Kiwi copyri...

via Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow May 4, 2026

1993 communal internet shaped me: https://sive.rs/netizen

1993 communal internet shaped me: https://sive.rs/netizen

via Derek Sivers May 4, 2026

The 1990s called and they want their dialog box back

This is perhaps my favourite feature in Lightroom. You press ⇧T, you draw a few lines, and presto – your photo is now even: This is doubly magical to me. The first part is that this is even possible – that you can straighten the photo in both dimensions af...

via Unsung May 3, 2026

Generated by openring