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 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, 2015-2022 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)