The zcmp and zdiff commands are used to invoke the cmp or the diff program on files compressed via gzip. All options specified are passed directly to cmp or diff. If only file1 is specified, it is compared to the uncompressed contents of file1.gz. If two files are specified, their contents (uncompressed if necessary) are fed to cmp or diff. The input files are not modified. The exit status from cmp or diff is preserved.
Messages from the cmp or diff programs may refer to file names such as "-" instead of to the file names specified.
History
Arch Linux 2026-11-01 to Debian 12 (Bookworm): the text shown here
Debian 11 (Bullseye)
Debian 10 (Buster)
Debian 9 (Stretch)
Debian 8 (Jessie)
Debian 7 (Wheezy)
Debian 6.0 (Squeeze) to Debian 5.0 (Lenny)
Debian 4.0 (Etch) to Debian 1.1 (Buzz)
--brief until Debian 10 (Buster);
--bz2 until Debian 10 (Buster);
--context until Debian 10 (Buster);
--expand-tabs until Debian 10 (Buster);
--force-format until Debian 10 (Buster);
--format until Debian 10 (Buster);
--gz until Debian 10 (Buster);
--help until Debian 10 (Buster);
--ignore-all-space until Debian 10 (Buster);
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