> from googling around, some pages tell me that gzcat is same as zcat ?

zcat decompresses .Z compressed files created by the "compress" command.
Compress is not shipped in free software systems due to a patent held
on LZW compression held by Unisys.

gzcat decompresses .gz compressed files created by the "gzip" command.
gzip was designed to be a replacement for "compress" which did not
use the LZW algorithm.

The LZW algorithm is quite old and thus is slowly losing patent
protection.

-- 
 Glen Turner  <http://www.gdt.id.au/>
 Tel: 0416 295 857 or +61 416 295 857
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