ZLESS(1) General Commands Manual ZLESS(1)
NAME
zless - file perusal filter for crt viewing of compressed text
SYNOPSIS
zless [ name ... ]
DESCRIPTION
The zless command is a filter which allows examination of compressed or plain text files one screenful at a time
on a soft-copy terminal. It is the equivalent of setting the environment variable LESSOPEN to '|gzip -cdfq --
%s', and the environment variable LESSMETACHARS to '<space><tab><newline>;*?"()<>[|&^‘#\$%=~', and then running
less. However, enough people seem to think that having the command zless available is important to be worth pro‐
viding it.
SEE ALSO
zmore(1), less(1)
BUGS
The zless command does not work with compressed data that is piped to it via standard input; it requires that in‐
put files be specified as arguments. To read compressed data from a pipe, you can use ...|gunzip|less instead of
...|zless.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Copyright © 2006-2007, 2015-2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Copyright © 1992, 1993 Jean-loup Gailly
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and
this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim
copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice
identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above
conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by
the Foundation.
ZLESS(1)
NAME
zless - file perusal filter for crt viewing of compressed text
SYNOPSIS
zless [ name ... ]
DESCRIPTION
The zless command is a filter which allows examination of compressed or plain text files one screenful at a time
on a soft-copy terminal. It is the equivalent of setting the environment variable LESSOPEN to '|gzip -cdfq --
%s', and the environment variable LESSMETACHARS to '<space><tab><newline>;*?"()<>[|&^‘#\$%=~', and then running
less. However, enough people seem to think that having the command zless available is important to be worth pro‐
viding it.
SEE ALSO
zmore(1), less(1)
BUGS
The zless command does not work with compressed data that is piped to it via standard input; it requires that in‐
put files be specified as arguments. To read compressed data from a pipe, you can use ...|gunzip|less instead of
...|zless.
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
Copyright © 2006-2007, 2015-2023 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
Copyright © 1992, 1993 Jean-loup Gailly
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and
this permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim
copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice
identical to this one.
Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above
conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by
the Foundation.
ZLESS(1)