Does zgrep unzip a file before searching?

Question

Does zgrep unzip a gzip file and make a temporary copy before searching or does it search directly on the compressed file?

lhf · Accepted Answer · 2017-07-18T23:22:27.460

1

This source of zgrep uncompresses the file with zcat and pipes the result to grep.

So, no, it does not use a temporary file, but yes, it decompresses (but not fully) before searching.

edited Jul 18 '17 at 23:22

answered Jul 18 '17 at 19:11

lhf

So does this [other source](https://fossies.org/linux/zutils/zgrep.cc), which is in C++. – lhf Jul 18 '17 at 19:16

1 Answers1