Text files which are too big to be decompressed as the ones in Wikimedia Downloads, should be better read with bzcat or some similar tool. To read files in bz2 format in a cat like fashion, so:


$ bzcat huge_file.bz2 | ./my_program


Or, just to read it on the screen:


$ bzcat huge_file.bz2 | more


To read files in a 7z format using a cat fashion stuff (no, 7zcat doesn't exist, as far as I know) use:


7z x -so even_bigger_file.7z | ./my_program