.TH z 1 "18 February 1999" "Edgeware tools"
.SH NAME
z \- run shell commands on compressed files
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B z
.I command
.RI [ arguments ...]
.SH DESCRIPTION
The
.B z
script examines the shell command passed to it for filenames which look
as if they're compressed files.  For each one that it finds, it
decompresses the file into a temporary place, and replaces the
compressed file's name in the command line with the name of the
decompressed version.  When the command terminates,
.B z
deletes the decompressed files and exits.
.SH BUGS
The
.B z
program is a very simple
.B bash
shell script.  As a result there are a number of limitations:
.PP
Changes made to the temporary decompressed files are ignored: the
original is left unchanged.
.PP
Nonexistent files cause errors to be reported.
.PP
The decompressed versions of files are always created with default
owner, group and permissions (as set by the current euid, egid and umask
settings).
.PP
It doesn't leave file extensions on the decompressed files.
.SH AUTHOR
Mark Wooding <mdw@distorted.org.uk>