Description

Zutils is a collection of utilities able to process any combination of
compressed and uncompressed files transparently. If any file given,
including standard input, is compressed, its decompressed content is used.
Compressed files are decompressed on the fly; no temporary files are
created.

These utilities are not wrapper scripts but safer and more efficient C++
programs. In particular the option '--recursive' is very efficient in
those utilities supporting it.

The utilities provided are zcat, zcmp, zdiff, zgrep, ztest, and zupdate.
The formats supported are bzip2, gzip, lzip, and xz.
Zutils uses external compressors. The compressor to be used for each format
is configurable at runtime.

zcat, zcmp, zdiff, and zgrep are improved replacements for the shell scripts
provided by GNU gzip. ztest is unique to zutils. zupdate is similar to
gzip's znew.

NOTE: Bzip2 and lzip provide well-defined values of exit status, which makes
them safe to use with zutils. Gzip and xz may return ambiguous warning
values, making them less reliable back ends for zutils.

FORMAT NOTE 1: The option '--format' allows the processing of a subset
of formats in recursive mode and when trying compressed file names:
'zgrep foo -r --format=bz2,lz somedir somefile.tar'.

FORMAT NOTE 2: If the option '--force-format' is given, the files are
passed to the corresponding decompressor without verifying their format,
allowing for example the processing of compress'd (.Z) files with gzip:
'zcmp --force-format=gz file.Z file.lz'.

LANGUAGE NOTE: Uncompressed = not compressed = plain data; it may never have
been compressed. Decompressed is used to refer to data which have undergone
the process of decompression.


Copyright (C) 2009-2021 Antonio Diaz Diaz.

This file is free documentation: you have unlimited permission to copy,
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