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is there any way to patch a file, that is compressed via gzip without decompressing it first? I tried

patch -n <(gzip -d file.gz) patch_to_file.diff > new_file

but I only got

patch: **** Can't create temporary file /dev/fd/63.o65LeZA : No such file or directory

as a result.

I'd like to avoid the storage overhead, so if there is any way to do this with pipes/process substitution I'd be very happy. :)

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  • If the patch that you have is for the uncompressed data, then you must uncompress the data to patch it. Since patching a file changes it, you would additionally have to re-compress the data after patching. This is assuming that you don't have a binary patch for the compressed file itself (in which case you would not be able to use patch, which is for text files). Commented Jan 12, 2023 at 15:50
  • @Kusalananda Not disagreeing, but there are tools like zless which allow transparently exposing the plain text contents of a file without manually requiring a decompression step first. In a parallel universe, a tool like zpatch could exist which would answer the question. (Unfortunately?) we don't live in that universe, though :) Commented Jan 13, 2023 at 1:29

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