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The gunzip command

The gunzip command is an antonym command of gzip command. In other words, it decompresses files deflated by the gzip command.

gunzip takes a list of files on its command line and replaces each file whose name ends with .gz, -gz, .z, -z, or _z (ignoring case) and which begins with the correct magic number with an uncompressed file without the original extension. gunzip also recognizes the special extensions .tgz and .taz as shorthands for .tar.gz and .tar.Z respectively.

Examples:

  1. Uncompress a file

gunzip filename.gz

  1. Recursively uncompress content inside a directory, that match extension (suffix) compressed formats accepted by gunzip:

gunzip -r directory_name/

  1. Uncompress all files in the current/working directory whose suffix match .tgz:

gunzip -S .tgz *

  1. List compressed and uncompressed sizes, compression ratio and uncompressed name of input compressed file/s:

gunzip -l file_1 file_2

Syntax:

gunzip [ -acfhklLnNrtvV ] [-S suffix] [ name ... ]

Video tutorial about using gzip, gunzip and tar commands:

This video shows how to compress and decompress in a Unix shell. It uses gunzip as decompression command.

Additional Flags and their Functionalities:

Short Flag Long Flag Description
-c –stdout write on standard output, keep original files unchanged
-h –help give help information
-k –keep keep (don't delete) input files
-l –list list compressed file contents
-q –quiet suppress all warnings
-r –recursive operate recursively on directories
-S –suffix=SUF use suffix SUF on compressed files
–synchronous synchronous output (safer if system crashes, but slower)
-t –test test compressed file integrity
-v –verbose verbose mode
-V –version display version number

Last update: 2022-05-12
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