gunzip

Decompress files.

Supplemental Information

The gunzip command is a widely used utility for decompressing files. It is primarily used to decompress files compressed with gzip, which typically have a .gz extension. In fact, gunzip is a hard link to gzip, meaning both compression and decompression can be performed using the gzip command alone.

Syntax

gunzip (options) (parameters)

Options

-a, --ascii: Use ASCII text mode;
-c, --stdout, --to-stdout: Output the decompressed data to standard output;
-f, --force: Force decompression even if files already exist or are symbolic links;
-h, --help: Display online help;
-l, --list: List information about the compressed files;
-L, --license: Display version and copyright information;
-n, --no-name: When decompressing, ignore any original file name and time stamp;
-N, --name: When decompressing, restore the original file name and time stamp;
-q, --quiet: Suppress all warnings;
-r, --recursive: Decompress all files in the specified directory and its subdirectories;
-S <suffix>, --suffix <suffix>: Use <suffix> as the compression suffix;
-t, --test: Test the integrity of the compressed file;
-v, --verbose: Display verbose output;
-V, --version: Display version information;

Parameters

File List: Specifies the compressed files to be decompressed.

Examples

First, compress all files and subdirectories in /etc, backup the archive to /opt/etc.zip, and then compress etc.zip using gzip with a compression level of 9.

zip -r /opt/etc.zip /etc
gzip -9v /opt/etc.zip

View the compression information of the resulting etc.zip.gz file.

gzip -l /opt/etc.zip.gz
compressed        uncompressed ratio uncompressed_name
11938745            12767265   6.5% /opt/etc.zip

Decompress the etc.zip.gz file into the current directory.

gunzip /opt/etc.zip.gz
# or
gzip -d /opt/etc.zip.gz

As shown in the example, gzip -d is equivalent to the gunzip command.