opening .gz file and extracting the .txt file

[Jacob Sonia]

Hi,

I have a .gz file and when i try extracting it, it has a .txt file and i want to open the .gz file and extract this .txt file and place it in another folder. Please advise how i can achieve this. I tried a few open source programs but didn't really work.

Thanks,

[Greg Charles]

Unlike a .zip file, a .gz is just a single compressed file, though often that file is a tar archive. Let's assume your file is just a simple compressed text file. You don't even have to search around for an open source solution, because standard Java already includes a GZIPInputStream class. You can wrap your FileInputStream in that, and then wrap the result in a BufferedReader or whatever gives you the interface you want. Read the contents of the file and write it out in plain text where you want it to go.

[Rob Spoor]

You forgot InputStreamReader; BufferedReader takes a Reader, not an InputStream. So the entire chain is this:

BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(new GZipInputStream(new FileInputStream(file))));

Jacob, don't be intimidated by the nesting; you can use temporary variables if you want:

InputStream fis = new FileInputStream(file);
GZipInputStream gis = new GZipInputStream(fis);
InputStreamReader isr = new InputStreamReader(gis);
BufferedReader reader = new BufferedReader(isr);