shell function to provide "smart concatenation" to switch between cat zcat and bzcat as needed

scat.sh

# "smart cat" -- and an awesome acronym
# shell function which will try and use 
# zcat or bzcat on the filename if provided
# add to your .bash_profile or whatever
# example: scat file1.txt file2.gz file3.bz2 | grep "something useful"
scat()
{
  for FILE in $@; do
    MIME=$(file -bi $FILE)
    case $MIME in
      "application/x-gzip")
        zcat $FILE
        ;;
      "application/x-bzip2")
        bzcat $FILE
        ;;
      *)
        cat $FILE
        ;;
    esac
  done
}