How can I gzip standard in to a file and also print standard in to standard out?

Question

I want to execute a command, have the output of that command get gzip'd on the fly, and also echo/tee out the output of that command.

i.e., something like:

echo "hey hey, we're the monkees" | gzip --stdout > my_log.gz 

Except when the line executes, I want to see this on standard out:

hey hey, we're the monkees 

Answer 1

Another way (assuming a shell like bash or zsh):

echo "hey hey, we're the monkees" | tee >(gzip --stdout > my_log.gz) 

The admittedly strange >() syntax basically does the following:

• Create new FIFO (usually something in /tmp/)
• Execute command inside () and bind the FIFO to stdin on that subcommand
• Return FIFO filename to command line.

What tee ends up seeing, then, is something like:

tee /tmp/arjhaiX4 

All gzip sees is its standard input.

For Bash, see man bash for details. It's in the section on redirection. For Zsh, see man zshexpn under the heading "Process Substitution."

As far as I can tell, the Korn Shell, variants of the classic Bourne Shell (including ash and dash), and the C Shell don't support this syntax.