Debian Bug report logs - #274922
zcat should work properly against non-gzipped files

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Message #5 received at [email protected] (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Stephen R Laniel <[email protected]>

To: Debian Bug Tracking System <[email protected]>

Subject: zcat should work properly against non-gzipped files

Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 14:46:19 -0400

Package: gzip
Version: 1.3.5-9
Severity: wishlist

Zgrep and zless, if run against a non-gzipped text file, will display
the file properly. Zcat does not, and it should. Either that, or zgrep's
and zless's behavior should be changed; there doesn't seem to be any
good reason for the inconsistency. 

-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.7take3
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages gzip depends on:
ii  debianutils                 2.8.4        Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  libc6                       2.3.2.ds1-13 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an

-- no debconf information

Message #12 received at [email protected] (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Flavio Stanchina <[email protected]>

To: [email protected], Stephen R Laniel <[email protected]>

Subject: Re: zcat should work properly against non-gzipped files

Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2005 12:06:24 +0200

Had the same problem recently, but the solution is very simple: use
  zcat -f <file>

if <file> might or might not be compressed.

-- 
Ciao, Flavio

Message #17 received at [email protected] (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Stephen R Laniel <[email protected]>

To: Flavio Stanchina <[email protected]>

Cc: [email protected]

Subject: Re: zcat should work properly against non-gzipped files

Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 08:16:24 -0400

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 12:06:24PM +0200, Flavio Stanchina wrote:
> Had the same problem recently, but the solution is very simple: use
>   zcat -f <file>
> 
> if <file> might or might not be compressed.

That's cool, but shouldn't zcat behave just like zgrep and
the others? Namely, I should just be able to do

zcat <file>

and everything should work fine, just like zgrep does. Why
are the interfaces different?

-- 
Stephen R. Laniel
[email protected]
+(617) 308-5571
http://laniels.org/
PGP key: http://laniels.org/slaniel.key

Message #22 received at [email protected] (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Flavio Stanchina <[email protected]>

To: Stephen R Laniel <[email protected]>

Cc: [email protected]

Subject: Re: zcat should work properly against non-gzipped files

Date: Thu, 09 Jun 2005 17:26:24 +0200

Stephen R Laniel wrote:
> That's cool, but shouldn't zcat behave just like zgrep and
> the others? [...] Why are the interfaces different?

I don't know why they are different, but I don't think it would be a 
good idea to change them now. Only $DEITY knows how many scripts could 
be broken by such change.

-- 
Ciao, Flavio

Message #27 received at [email protected] (full text, mbox, reply):

From: Stephen R Laniel <[email protected]>

To: Flavio Stanchina <[email protected]>

Cc: [email protected]

Subject: Re: zcat should work properly against non-gzipped files

Date: Thu, 9 Jun 2005 11:29:56 -0400

On Thu, Jun 09, 2005 at 05:26:24PM +0200, Flavio Stanchina wrote:
> I don't know why they are different, but I don't think it would be a 
> good idea to change them now. Only $DEITY knows how many scripts could 
> be broken by such change.

I suppose scripts should just use

alias zcat='zcat -f '

and be done with it.

Thanks, Flavio.

Steve

-- 
Stephen R. Laniel
[email protected]
+(617) 308-5571
http://laniels.org/
PGP key: http://laniels.org/slaniel.key

Message #32 received at [email protected] (full text, mbox, reply):

From: [email protected] (Bdale Garbee)

To: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]

Subject: zcat is not a wrapper

Date: Tue, 20 Jun 2006 14:57:30 -0600 (MDT)

tags 255634 +upstream +wontfix
tags 274922 +upstream +wontfix
thanks

The problem is that 'zcat' is not a wrapper, it's just a different name under
which gzip is invoked... while zgrep and some of the other z* utilities are
wrapper scripts.  There's no easy way to change zcat's behavior without making
it a wrapper, and that has performance implications since zcat gets used in 
scripts.

Bdale

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