gzip -d to new file? 1

[dstevens66]

I want to unzip a compressed file to another file in another directory.

I thought I could use:

gzip -d /folder/datafile.dat.gz > /otherfolder/newfile.dat

where newfile.dat would have the uncompressed contents of datafile.dat.gz. I want datafile.dat.gz to remain unchanged.

When I try the command I wrote above, I get an empty /otherfolder/newfile.dat. I know there are some lines of data in /folder/datafile.dat.gz. The file datafile.dat.gz is now datafile.dat.

I'm not a unix scripting guru (obviously) hopefully there is something simple I'm missing. thanks

 

[Chapter11]

Try -c instead of -d

 

[dstevens66]

Thanks! That did it!

I don't know if anyone help with this -

when I do the unzipping, the new file is full of junk characters instead of the actual data from the zipped file.

If /folder/datafile.dat.gz contains '20070905 10'

the unzipped contains something like ^_\213^H^H\212\253\341F^Cdatafile.dat.gz\223\357\346\340\350Z\

Note the name of the file is included with the junk. But it looks like none of the data from inside the file is included. Any ideas?

 

[Chapter11]

The problem you are having now is this:

Since the original file was created with a simple "gzip filename.ext", the very beginning of the gzip has a small amount of header data. When you do a direct extraction, you're also extracting that header; if you were to just do a "gunzip filename.ext.gz", that header would not be included in the resulting file.

If you've got the space, copy the original .gz to another directory, then just do a normal gunzip on the file.

 

[p5wizard]

I'd try

gzip -dc filename.ext.gz >/path/to/filename.ext

or

gunzip -c filename.ext.gz >/path/to/filename.ext



HTH,

p5wizard