bug#69789: closed (zcat, zgrep and other (g)zutils' names)

[GNU bug Tracking System]

Your message dated Wed, 13 Mar 2024 22:25:14 -0700
with message-id <3508af35-99ac-46c8-8579-6b0819523b63@cs.ucla.edu>
and subject line Re: bug#69789: zcat, zgrep and other (g)zutils' names
has caused the debbugs.gnu.org bug report #69789,
regarding zcat, zgrep and other (g)zutils' names
to be marked as done.

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69789: https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=69789
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--- Begin Message --- Subject: zcat, zgrep and other (g)zutils' names Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2024 23:54:15 +0100 User-agent: GWP-Draft

Hello,

I noticed, not for the first time that zcat, zgrep and rest of the utils are ambiguously named. Neither gzip nor .gz does not begin with 'z'. All other compressors call their utils by the name of extension, like xzcat, lzcat, zstdgrep and so on. This is more logical and less confusing.

To make things worse, *nix Compress produces .Z files and that could be using 'z' as prefix for the names other its tools. It doesn't have ones but that's the point - it would be logical to use zcat for a compress' tool name, and 'gzcat' fo gzip cat tool.

And the last and not least, these zXXX names collide with zutils' names, which are more 'generic', in a sense that they serve as a tools for many compressors, not only for gzip.

So, for the reasons mentioned above and to avoid confusion I propose to rename zcat, zgrep, etc., to gzcat, gzgrep, etc.

Hope you understand the request.

Regards

wrotycz

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> Subject: 
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> Re: bug#69789: zcat, zgrep and other (g)zutils' names
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> Date: 
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> Wed, 13 Mar 2024 22:25:14 -0700
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> User-agent: 
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> Mozilla Thunderbird
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> On 2024-03-13 15:54, wrotycz wrote:
> > I propose to rename zcat, zgrep, etc., to gzcat, gzgrep, etc
>
> That's already doable when building gzip; you can use './configure 
> --program-prefix'. Run './configure --help' for more, or see the file 
> INSTALL.
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