Autoztool contains a command called z, which executes the command found on its command line, in an environment in which compressed files are automatically and mostly transparently decompressed when they are opened for reading.
You use this command much like nohup or nice. For example:
z less truss-geneaology.text.gz
Especially if you have zless already this example probably doesn't seem very compelling. The advantages appear if you don't have a "z" variant of a command, or where the behaviour of the "z" version differs in some unhelpful or ugly way from the standard version.
For example, on my system, running zless with multiple filenames on the command line produces much less user-friendly behaviour than standard less, and using "z less" instead solves this.
Autoztool works for me on Debian GNU/Linux with libc6 2.1.3 and 2.2.2. It could at least in theory be ported to other systems which have LD_PRELOAD or something sufficiently similar. If you do such a port, please send me a patch. (Use "diff -u".)
Source: autoztool-0.2.tar.gz
deb for i386 Linux: autoztool_0.2-1_i386.deb
Please report bugs to me at richard+autoztool@sfere.greenend.org.uk. You should check that your bug is not fixed in a later version before doing so.
If you think this sounds like zlibc then you wouldn't be far wrong. However Autoztool is smaller and simpler, and intended to provide convenient access to occasional compressed files, rather than to do the whole job of emulating a compressed filesystem.
Copyright (C) 2001, 2003 Richard Kettlewell.
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA