"umair shakil" umairshakeel@gmail.com wrote:

...

when i use less command to see this gz file it says "do u want to see binary file??" through which utility i can see the contants of the file??? <<

All right, I'll bite. You could use zcat. But if you really want to use less to *automatically* unzip a .gz file, then you can create a less preprocessor:

Use vi to create /usr/local/bin/lesspipe.sh and type in the following text:

#!/bin/bash case "$1" in *.Z) uncompress -c $1 2>/dev/null ;; *.gz) gunzip -c $1 2>/dev/null ;; esac

Make the lesspipe.sh file executable ('chmod +x /usr/local/bin/lesspipe.sh') and then create a LESSOPEN environment variable to make less use it:

export LESSOPEN="|/usr/local/bin/lesspipe.sh %s"

Test that this works, by cd'ing to /usr/doc/HOWTO, and if all is OK, add the export line to /etc//bashrc so that it takes permanent effect. Obviously, the lesspipe.sh script can be extended to do other things.

All this is basically in the less man page, of course.

Best,

--- Les Bell, RHCE, CISSP [http://www.lesbell.com.au] Tel: +61 2 9451 1144 FreeWorldDialup: 800909