xzegrep
Search xz files with extended regex
TLDR
Search an xz/lzma file using extended regex
$ xzegrep "[pattern]" [file.xz]
Case-insensitive search$ xzegrep -i "[pattern]" [file.xz]
Search recursively through compressed files$ xzegrep -r "[pattern]" [directory]
Show only matching files, not lines$ xzegrep -l "[pattern]" [*.xz]
Show line numbers of matches$ xzegrep -n "[pattern]" [file.xz]
Print N lines of context around each match$ xzegrep -C [3] "[pattern]" [file.xz]
SYNOPSIS
xzegrep [grep-options] pattern [file...]
DESCRIPTION
xzegrep invokes grep -E on the decompressed contents of files compressed with xz, lzma, gzip, or bzip2 (detected by extension). It is the xz-utils wrapper equivalent to zegrep for gzip files: a convenience shortcut for xzgrep -E, taking an extended regular expression and forwarding all other arguments to grep.If no file is given, xzegrep reads from standard input. Most options accepted by grep can be passed through.
PARAMETERS
-i, --ignore-case
Ignore case distinctions.-l, --files-with-matches
Print only the names of files containing matches.-n, --line-number
Prefix each line with its line number.-c, --count
Print only the count of matching lines per file.-v, --invert-match
Select non-matching lines.-h, --no-filename
Suppress filename prefix in output.-H, --with-filename
Always print filename prefix.-r, --recursive
Recursively search directories.-A N / -B N / -C N
Print N lines after / before / around each match.-q, --quiet
Suppress all normal output; exit 0 if any line matches.
INSTALL
sudo apt install xz-utils
sudo dnf install xz
sudo pacman -S xz
sudo apk add xz
sudo zypper install xz
brew install xz
nix profile install nixpkgs#xz
CAVEATS
The whole file must be decompressed in memory or piped, so searching very large archives is not faster than running xz -dc | grep -E manually. On many distributions xzegrep is being deprecated in favour of xzgrep -E.