# Is it possible to see the content of the compressed file?

**URL:** <https://community.unix.com/t/is-it-possible-to-see-the-content-of-the-compressed-file/201636>\
**Category:** UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users\
**Created:** [June 19, 2008, 1:14am UTC](https://community.unix.com/t/is-it-possible-to-see-the-content-of-the-compressed-file/201636 "2008-06-19T01:14:46Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![bobprabhu](https://community.unix.com/letter_avatar/bobprabhu/32/5_5575768a8748004e209b776fc1b2916d.png) [@bobprabhu](https://community.unix.com/u/bobprabhu)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2008, 1:14am UTC](https://community.unix.com/t/is-it-possible-to-see-the-content-of-the-compressed-file/201636/1 "2008-06-19T01:14:46Z")

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How we can view the content of the file,if it compressed (or) Zipped ,without uncompress ?

I have one file ,i compressed it,without uncompressing the file.Is it possible to see the content of the file?

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**Author:** ![era](https://community.unix.com/letter_avatar/era/32/5_5575768a8748004e209b776fc1b2916d.png) [@era](https://community.unix.com/u/era)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2008, 3:39am UTC](https://community.unix.com/t/is-it-possible-to-see-the-content-of-the-compressed-file/201636/2 "2008-06-19T03:39:16Z")

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Some tools such as less will allow you to inspect the contents of some compressed files without explicitly decompressing them. Of course, behind the scenes, it is extracting the compressed data to a temporary location.

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**Author:** ![spirtle](https://community.unix.com/letter_avatar/spirtle/32/5_5575768a8748004e209b776fc1b2916d.png) [@spirtle](https://community.unix.com/u/spirtle)\
**Post date:** [June 19, 2008, 4:55am UTC](https://community.unix.com/t/is-it-possible-to-see-the-content-of-the-compressed-file/201636/3 "2008-06-19T04:55:42Z")

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As era explains, the answer is no, not really, but you might be able to get a similar effect by uncompressing to stdout.  
For a file in a zip archive, try unzip -c .  
For compressed files, try gunzip -c or equivalently gzip -dc or zcat.