How to use gzip on stdout

Does anyone know how I can use gzip to zip a large log file on the fly. My simulation is currently logging a large file that I need for analysis at a later point. However the files are so huge that I may even run out of disk space. The content is mainly text so when compressed the files are smaller... I would like to gzip on the fly without having to dump it to a file and then create the archive. This is what I am doing right now and would like to not store foo.log... ./sim <args> >foo.log 2>&1 and when its completed i do tar -cf - foo.log | gzip > foo.tar.gz Any suggetions?

I'm not really following what your trying to do. I think what you want is ./sim <arg> 2>&1 | tar -czf foo.tar.gz

If all you want is a gzip file of a single log file try ./sim <arg> 2>&1 | gzip -c > foo.gz Hope that works better than my first answer!