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Compressed data

As of Miller 6, Miller supports reading GZIP, BZIP2, and ZLIB formats transparently, and in-process. And (as before Miller 6) you have a more general --prepipe option to support other decompression programs.

Automatic detection on input

If your files end in .gz, .bz2, or .z then Miller will autodetect by file extension:

file gz-example.csv.gz

gz-example.csv.gz: gzip compressed data, was "gz-example.csv", last modified: Mon Aug 23 02:04:34 2021, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 429

mlr --csv sort -f color gz-example.csv.gz

color,shape,flag,k,index,quantity,rate
purple,triangle,false,5,51,81.2290,8.5910
purple,triangle,false,7,65,80.1405,5.8240
purple,square,false,10,91,72.3735,8.2430
red,square,true,2,15,79.2778,0.0130
red,circle,true,3,16,13.8103,2.9010
red,square,false,4,48,77.5542,7.4670
red,square,false,6,64,77.1991,9.5310
yellow,triangle,true,1,11,43.6498,9.8870
yellow,circle,true,8,73,63.9785,4.2370
yellow,circle,true,9,87,63.5058,8.3350

This will decompress the input data on the fly, while leaving the disk file unmodified. This helps you save disk space, at the cost of some additional runtime CPU usage to decompress the data.

Manual detection on input

If the filename doesn't in in .gz, .bz2, or .z then you can use the flags --gzin, --bz2in, or --zin to let Miller know:

mlr --csv --gzin sort -f color myfile.bin # myfile.bin has gzip contents

External decompressors on input

Using the --prepipe flag, you can provide the name of any decompression program in your $PATH and Miller will run it on each input file, effectively piping the standard output of that program to Miller's standard input.

You can, of course, already do without this for single input files, for example:

gunzip < gz-example.csv.gz | mlr --csv sort -f color

color,shape,flag,k,index,quantity,rate
purple,triangle,false,5,51,81.2290,8.5910
purple,triangle,false,7,65,80.1405,5.8240
purple,square,false,10,91,72.3735,8.2430
red,square,true,2,15,79.2778,0.0130
red,circle,true,3,16,13.8103,2.9010
red,square,false,4,48,77.5542,7.4670
red,square,false,6,64,77.1991,9.5310
yellow,triangle,true,1,11,43.6498,9.8870
yellow,circle,true,8,73,63.9785,4.2370
yellow,circle,true,9,87,63.5058,8.3350

The benefit of --prepipe is that Miller will run the specified program once per file, respecting file boundaries.

The prepipe command can be anything which reads from standard input and produces data acceptable to Miller. Nominally this allows you to use whichever decompression utilities you have installed on your system, on a per-file basis.

If the command has flags, quote them: e.g. mlr --prepipe 'zcat -cf'.

In your .mlrrc file, --prepipe and --prepipex are not allowed as they could be used for unexpected code execution. You can use --prepipe-bz2, --prepipe-gunzip, and --prepipe-zcat in .mlrrc, though.

Note that this feature is quite general and is not limited to decompression utilities. You can use it to apply per-file filters of your choice: e.g. mlr --prepipe 'head -n 10' ..., if you like.

There is a --prepipe and a --prepipex:

  • If the command normally runs with nameofprogram < filename.ext (such as gunzip or zcat -cf or xz -cd) then use --prepipe.
  • If the command normally runs with nameofprogram filename.ext (such as unzip -qc) then use --prepipex.

Lastly, note that if --prepipe or --prepipex is specified on the Miller command line, it replaces any autodetect decisions that might have been made based on the filename extension. Likewise, --gzin/--bz2in/--zin are ignored if --prepipe or --prepipex is also specified.

Compressed output

Everything said so far on this page has to do with compressed input.

For compressed output:

  • Normally Miller output is to stdout, so you can pipe the output: mlr sort -n quantity foo.csv | gzip > sorted.csv.gz.

  • For tee statements, which write output to files rather than stdout, use tee's redirect syntax:

mlr --from example.csv --csv put -q '
  filename = $color.".csv.gz";
  tee | "gzip > ".filename, $*
'

file red.csv.gz purple.csv.gz yellow.csv.gz

red.csv.gz:    gzip compressed data, last modified: Mon Aug 23 02:34:05 2021, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 185
purple.csv.gz: gzip compressed data, last modified: Mon Aug 23 02:34:05 2021, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 164
yellow.csv.gz: gzip compressed data, last modified: Mon Aug 23 02:34:05 2021, from Unix, original size modulo 2^32 158

mlr --csv cat yellow.csv.gz

color,shape,flag,k,index,quantity,rate
yellow,triangle,true,1,11,43.6498,9.8870
yellow,circle,true,8,73,63.9785,4.2370
yellow,circle,true,9,87,63.5058,8.3350
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