Anonymous Monk has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

hi, i'm trying to open and read a .gz file.....any ideas on how to do this? i'm trying the following but does not seem to work.... 
open file.gz;
while (<file.gz>) {
}

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Re: Opening and reading ,gz file
by dws (Chancellor) on Aug 22, 2002 at 19:47 UTC
    i'm trying to open and read a .gz file.....any ideas on how to do this?

    Try 

      my $file = "file.gz";
  open(IN, "gzcat $file |") or die "gunzip $file: $!";
  while ( <IN> ) {
      ...
  }
  close(IN);

    [download]
    See perldoc -f open for more details.

    You might want to specify the full patch to gzcat if there's a possibility that someone might sneak a trojan horse into your PATH.


    Update: s/gunzip/gzcat/

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[d/l]
[select]
      Remember to use the '-c' flag or you will just uncompress the file and get no input at all. 

      open(IN, "gunzip -c $file |") or die "gunzip $file: $!";

      [download]

      bluto

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Re: oepning and reading ,gz file
by sauoq (Abbot) on Aug 22, 2002 at 19:50 UTC
    See Compress::Zlib if you want a module for this sort of thing. 
    -sauoq
"My two cents aren't worth a dime.";
[reply]

      Better yet, see IO::Zlib, which lets you use a simple filehandle interface.

      use IO::Zlib;  #requires Compress::Zlib, of course
my $fh = IO::Zlib->new("foo.gz");
while (<$fh>) {
    go_nuts();
}

      [download]


      If God had meant us to fly, he would *never* have given us the railroads.
          --Michael Flanders

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[d/l]
•Re: Opening and reading .gz file
by merlyn (Sage) on Aug 22, 2002 at 20:41 UTC
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Re: Opening and reading .gz file
by cosmicsoup (Beadle) on Aug 22, 2002 at 21:53 UTC
    Try this: open(GZIN, 'gzcat file.gz|') ; while (<GZIN>) { }
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