[PLUG] Compressed data files

[Paul Heinlein]

On 11 Nov 2002, Ed Sawicki wrote:

> I'm wondering how some programs deal with data files that are
> sometimes compressed using gzip. I haven't yet written code for
> this.
> 
> Taking the loadkeys program as an example, it can read keyboard map
> files that are either compressed or uncompressed (us.map or
> us.map.gz). Loadkeys is dynamically-linked and uses only libc.so.6.
> Does libc provide programmers with the ability to read compressed
> files or is this coded into the loadkeys program?

It looks to me like it probably forks an external process:

  [heinlein]$ strings /bin/loadkeys | grep -i zip
  bunzip2
  gunzip

If I were you, I'd grab the console-tools source code and grep for 
'unzip'.

--Paul Heinlein <heinlein at attbi.com>