Manual: zless

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 ';*?"()<>[|&^`#\$%=~', and then  running	less.	How‐
       ever, enough people seem to think that having the command zless available is important to be worth providing 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 input
       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, 2015–2025 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 copy‐
       ing, 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 con‐
       ditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in  a  translation  approved  by	 the
       Foundation.

														    ZLESS(1)