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Emacs comes with a library that can automatically uncompress
compressed files when you visit them, and automatically recompress them
if you alter them and save them. To enable this feature, type the
command M-x auto-compression-mode. You can enable it permanently
by customizing the option auto-compression-mode
.
When automatic compression (which implies automatic uncompression as
well) is enabled, Emacs recognizes compressed files by their file names.
File names ending in `.gz' indicate a file compressed with
gzip
. Other endings indicate other compression programs.
Automatic uncompression and compression apply to all the operations in which Emacs uses the contents of a file. This includes visiting it, saving it, inserting its contents into a buffer, loading it, and byte compiling it.