Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!yale!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: does a zgrep exist? (zgrep <> zcat | grep)
Message-ID: <12845:Feb1900:14:4891@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 19 Feb 91 00:14:48 GMT
References: <1991Feb15.232854.13378@robobar.co.uk> <463@bria> <1991Feb18.075330.15536@convex.com>
Organization: IR
Lines: 14

In article <1991Feb18.075330.15536@convex.com> tchrist@convex.COM (Tom Christiansen) writes:
> Guys, the original problem was that 
> 	zcat *.Z | grep regexp
> didn't help him identify in which file the match was found.

Yep. The right solution is to have a single-stream format that can
encode multiple files and various information about the files, including
filenames. Then give programs a -f flag to accept input (and produce
output) in that format.

tar and cpio formats are too verbose in some ways and too restricted in
others. In a coming message I will propose an alternative.

---Dan