zcat/gzcat works in linux, not on osx. general linux/osx compatibility
You are right. It's annoying behavior.
$ zcat foo.txt.gz
zcat: can't stat: foo.txt.gz (foo.txt.gz.Z): No such file or directory
Try this:
$ zcat < foo.txt.gz
asdfadsf
I know this is an old question. However, I found a solution from an even older github thread.
You can simply use gunzip -c that works similar to zcat without the errors on Mac OS X.
$ gunzip -c 20150707_backup.sql.gz | mysql -u mysql_user -p