How do I compress old logs but still grep them without decompressing?

Try: zgrep 'ERROR' /var/log/app-2026-06.log.gz

Info: zgrep, zcat, and zless inspect .gz files in memory without extracting them to disk.

Examples:

• $ zcat access.log.gz | awk '{print $1}' | sort -u
• $ zless huge-log.log.gz  # Page through compressed file
• $ find /var/log -name '*.log' -mtime +7 -exec gzip {} \;

Note: z-tools exist for most utilities (zgrep, zcat, zless, zdiff). For .xz archives, use xzgrep. Automate log compression using logrotate.

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