zcat" -- Command" "

Concatenate a compressed file 

zzccaatt [[ _f_i_l_e[[..ZZ||..ggzz]] ... ]]
zcat uncompresses each file ``on the fly,'' and prints the uncompressed text onto the standard output. Each file must have been compressed by the command compress and have the suffix .Z, or by the command gzip and have the suffix .gz.

If the command line names no file, zcat uncompresses matter read from the standard input.

Example

zcat is useful for extracting selected items from archives; it spares you the overhead of having to uncompress the entire archive just to get at one or two files. For example, to extract myfile from the compressed archive backup.tar.Z, use the following command line: 
     zcat backup.tar.Z | tar xvf - myfile

See Also