.TH zcat "" "" Command
.PC "Concatenate a compressed file"
\fBzcat [ \fIfile\fB[.Z|.gz]\fR ... \fB]\fR
.PP
.II "archive^extracting from compressed"
.B zcat
uncompresses each
.IB file
\*(QLon the fly,\*(QR and prints the uncompressed text onto the standard output.
Each
.I file
must have been compressed by the command
.B compress
and have the suffix
.BR .Z ,
or by the command
.B gzip
and have the suffix
.BR .gz .
.PP
If the command line names no
.IR file ,
.B zcat
uncompresses matter read from the standard input.
.SH Example
.B 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
.B myfile
from the compressed archive
.BR backup.tar.Z ,
use the following command line:
.DM
	zcat backup.tar.Z | tar xvf - myfile
.DE
.SH "See Also"
.Xr "commands," commands
.Xr "compress," compress
.Xr "gzip," gzip
.Xr "ram," ram
.Xr "uncompress" uncompres
