gunzip command in Linux with examples

Suraj1994

Read

Discuss

gunzip command is used to compress or expand a file or a list of files in Linux. It accepts all the files having extension as .gz, .z, _z, -gz, -z , .Z, .taz or.tgz and replace the compressed file with the original file by default. The files after uncompression retain its actual extension.

Syntax:

gunzip [Option] [archive name/file name]

Example 1: The argument that is passed here is: geeksforgeeks.txt which is a compressed text file.

Input:

Output:

geeksforgeeks.txt.gz

Example 2: The argument that is passed here is: geeksforgeeks.txt.gz which is a compressed file.

Input:

Output:

geeksforgeeks.txt

If a file is compressed using gzip command, a suffix i.e. .gz will be added to the file name after compression. Hence while uncompressing this file we can either use the original file name as shown in Example 1 or the filename with the suffix .gz as shown in Example 2 as an argument.

Example 3: In order to uncompress multiple files using the gunzip command, we can pass multiple file names as an argument as shown in the below example:

Syntax:

gunzip [file1] [file2] [file3]...

Input:

Output:

geeksforgeeks.txt, gfg.txt

Options:

-c: This option is used to view the text within a compressed file without uncompressing it. The ASCII/EBCDIC conversion is automatically done if it is suitable. The compressed file has to be a text file only.
Example:
```
gunzip -c geeksforgeeks.txt.tar.gz
```
Output:
-f: To decompress a file forcefully.
Example:
```
gunzip -f geeksforgeeks.txt.tar.gz
```
Output: The file will be forcefully extracted.
```
geeksforgeeks.txt
```
-k: This option can be used when we want to keep both the file i.e. the uncompressed and the original file after the uncompression.
Example:
```
gunzip -k geeksforgeeks.txt.tar.gz
```
Output: An extracted file will be added to the directory.
-l: This option is used to get the information of a compressed or an uncompressed file.
Example:
```
gunzip -l geeksforgeeks.txt.tar.gz
```
Output:
-L: This option displays the software license and exit.
Example:

Output:
-r: This option is used to uncompress all the files within the folder and subfolder recursively.
Syntax:
```
gunzip -r [Directory/Folder path]
```
Example:

This will extract all the compressed files recursively within the path /home/sc.
-t: To test whether the file is valid or not.
Syntax:
```
gunzip -t [File name]
```
-v: This option is used to get verbose information such as the file name, decompression percentage, etc.
Example:
```
gunzip -v geeksforgeeks.txt.gz
```
Output:
-V: This option is used to display version number.
-a: This option uses ASCII text mode to convert End-of-line characters using local conversion. This option is only supported on MS-DOS systems. When -a option is used on a Unix system, it decompresses the file ignoring the –ascii option.
Example:
-d: This option simply decompresses a file.
Example:

Output: The compressed file gets replaced by the original file i.e. geeksforgeeks.txt.
-h: This option displays the help information available and quits.
-n: This option does not save or restore the original name and time stamp while decompressing a file.
-N: This option saves or restore the original name and time stamp while decompression.
-q: This option suppresses all the warnings that arise during the execution of the command.
-s: This option use suffix SUF on compressed files.
-#: This option is used to control the speed and the amount of compression, where # can be any number between -1 to -9. -1 ensures the faster compression by decreasing the amount of compression while -9 ensures the best compression but takes more time comparatively.