xzgrep

search compressed files for a regular expression

TLDR

Search for a pattern within a file

$ xzgrep "[search_pattern]" [path/to/file]

Search for an exact string (disables regular expressions)

$ xzgrep --fixed-strings "[exact_string]" [path/to/file]

Search for a pattern in all files showing line numbers of matches

$ xzgrep --line-number "[search_pattern]" [path/to/file]

Use extended regular expressions (supports ?, +, {}, () and |), in case-insensitive mode

$ xzgrep --extended-regexp --ignore-case "[search_pattern]" [path/to/file]

Print 3 lines of context around, before, or after each match

$ xzgrep --[context|before-context|after-context]=[3] "[search_pattern]" [path/to/file]

Print file name and line number for each match with color output

$ xzgrep --with-filename --line-number --color=always "[search_pattern]" [path/to/file]

Search for lines matching a pattern, printing only the matched text

$ xzgrep --only-matching "[search_pattern]" [path/to/file]

SYNOPSIS

xzgrep [grep_options] [-e] pattern [file...]
xzegrep ...
xzfgrep ...
lzgrep ...
lzegrep ...
lzfgrep ...

xzgrep invokes grep(1) on files which may be either uncompressed or compressed with xz(1), lzma(1), gzip(1), bzip2(1), lzop(1), or zstd(1). All options specified are passed directly to grep(1).

If no file is specified, then standard input is decompressed if necessary and fed to grep(1). When reading from standard input, gzip(1), bzip2(1), lzop(1), and zstd(1) compressed files are not supported.

If xzgrep is invoked as xzegrep or xzfgrep then grep -E or grep -F is used instead of grep(1). The same applies to names lzgrep, lzegrep, and lzfgrep, which are provided for backward compatibility with LZMA Utils.

EXIT STATUS

0: At least one match was found from at least one of the input files. No errors occurred.
1: No matches were found from any of the input files. No errors occurred.
>1: One or more errors occurred. It is unknown if matches were found.

ENVIRONMENT

GREP: If the GREP environment variable is set, xzgrep uses it instead of grep(1), grep -E, or grep -F.