Which command is used to display the contents of a compressed file?

The command used to display the contents of a compressed file is zcat. This command is specifically designed to handle files that have been compressed using gzip. What makes zcat particularly useful is that it can read the compressed file and send the uncompressed data directly to standard output, allowing you to view the contents without needing to manually decompress the file first.

While the cat command displays the contents of files, it does not support compressed files. The gunzip command is primarily used for decompressing gzip files and does not display their content directly. The tar command often deals with archive files and can include compression, but it does not inherently display the file contents without extraction. Therefore, zcat is the most appropriate choice for viewing the contents of a gzip-compressed file without prior decompression.