bzfgrep

Search for lines matching the list of search strings separated by new lines in a compressed file (case-sensitive)

$ bzfgrep "[search_string]" [path/to/file]

$ bzfgrep [[-i|--ignore-case]] "[search_string]" [path/to/file]

$ bzfgrep [[-v|--invert-match]] "[search_string]" [path/to/file]

$ bzfgrep [[-H|--with-filename]] [[-n|--line-number]] "[search_string]" [path/to/file]

$ bzfgrep [[-o|--only-matching]] "[search_string]" [path/to/file]

$ bzfgrep [[-r|--recursive]] "[search_string]" [path/to/file]

bzfgrep [OPTION]... PATTERN [FILE]...

PATTERN
    The fixed string to search for within the files.

FILE
    The bzip2 compressed file(s) to search within. If no files are specified, bzfgrep reads from standard input.

-i, --ignore-case
    Ignore case distinctions in the PATTERN and input data.

-v, --invert-match
    Select non-matching lines; print lines that do not contain the PATTERN.

-c, --count
    Suppress normal output; instead print a count of matching lines for each input file.

-n, --line-number
    Prefix each line of output with the 0-based line number within its input file.

-l, --files-with-matches
    Suppress normal output; instead print the name of each input file from which output would normally have been produced.

-q, --quiet, --silent
    Suppress all normal output. Exit immediately with zero status if any match is found, and non-zero otherwise.

-h, --no-filename
    Suppress the prefixing of file names on output when multiple files are searched.

-H, --with-filename
    Print the file name for each match. This is the default when multiple files are searched.

-r, --recursive
    Read all files under each directory, recursively. This option is typically handled by bzgrep itself or the underlying grep command.

bzfgrep is not a standalone command but a common conceptual shorthand or an alias for bzgrep -F. It combines the capabilities of bzgrep, which allows searching within bzip2 compressed files, with fgrep (equivalent to grep -F), which performs searches for fixed strings rather than regular expressions. This means bzfgrep is designed for finding exact literal text patterns inside files compressed with bzip2, without requiring manual decompression.

Under the hood, bzfgrep (or bzgrep -F) typically operates by piping the decompressed output of a .bz2 file to grep -F. For instance, it might execute bzip2 -dc filename.bz2 | grep -F "pattern". This method is highly convenient for analyzing large compressed log files, archives, or data backups, where decompressing the entire file first would be time-consuming and consume significant disk space. It ensures that the search is fast and precise for literal text, avoiding the overhead of regular expression matching.

• bzfgrep is not a standard, standalone executable. It's almost always an alias or a wrapper script (like bzgrep -F), meaning its availability and exact behavior can vary depending on the system's configuration.
• Performance for very large numbers of .bz2 files or extremely large individual .bz2 files might still be slower than searching uncompressed data, as decompression happens on the fly.
• Requires both bzip2 and grep utilities to be installed and available in the system's PATH.
• Corrupted .bz2 files can lead to decompression errors, preventing successful searches.

bzfgrep typically functions by piping the output of bzip2 -dc FILE (decompressing the file to standard output) directly into grep -F PATTERN. This allows the search to proceed without creating a temporary uncompressed file on disk, making it highly memory-efficient for large files.

To find all lines containing the literal string "ERROR_CODE_404" in a compressed log file named access.log.2023-10-26.bz2, you would use:
bzfgrep "ERROR_CODE_404" access.log.2023-10-26.bz2

The evolution of bzfgrep is tied to the development of its constituent parts. grep, standing for "global regular expression print", was one of the earliest and most fundamental Unix utilities, created by Ken Thompson in the early 1970s. Its -F (fixed strings) option, also known as fgrep (fixed grep), provided a way to search for literal strings quickly without the overhead of regular expression parsing. Later, as data compression became common, bzip2 (developed by Julian Seward in the late 1990s) emerged as a popular compression algorithm known for its efficiency. To bridge the gap between compressed data and search utilities, bzgrep was created as part of the bzip2 package. It acts as a wrapper, allowing grep-like operations on .bz2 files. While bzfgrep is not a distinct command in itself, it represents the logical combination of bzgrep and fgrep's functionality, serving as a convenient conceptual tool or a simple alias for bzgrep -F to provide fast, literal string searches within bzip2 archives.

grep(1), bzgrep(1), bzip2(1), zgrep(1), xzgrep(1)