Be aware that gzread's second parameter - length reffers to the file's uncompressed size, therefore using this code:
<?php
$file_name = "/usr/local/something.txt.gz";
if($file_handle = gzopen($file_name, "r"))
{
$contents = gzread($file_handle, filesize($file_name));
gzclose($file_name);
}
?>
will probably truncate the content of the file as filesize checks for the file's compressed size.
So either use the actual uncompressed size, if you know it, or use an aribtrary big enough length, as gzreading will stop at the end of the file anyway.