Archiving

Creating archives and compress files.

zip

Available on most operating systems

zip archive.zip file

Create or update archive.zip, put file in there. If file is already existing in the archive it is replaced.

zip -r archive.zip path

Create or update archive.zip, put path and all below in there. Files existing in the archive are replaced.

unzip archive.zip file

Extract file from archive.zip and put it in the current directory

unzip archive.zip path

Extract path from archive.zip and put it in the current directory. Use quotes if path has wildcards.

unzip -l archive.zip

List all files in the archive.

unzip -l archive.zip path

List path if it is in the archive.

tar

Available on Unix-like operating systems

tar cvf archive.tar path

Create archive.tar and put all file under path in it. Be verbose, list what is done (-v)

tar xvf archive.tar path

Extract path from archive.tar, put it in the current directory. Be verbose, list what is done (-v)

tar tf archive.tar path

List what is in archive.tar.

tar cvzf archive.tgz path

Create gzipped archive.tgz and put all file under path in it. Be verbose, list what is done (-v).

Similar for x and t, the z makes tar work on gzipped archives;

tar uvf archive.tar --no-recursion --files-from -

Read filenames from standard input e.g. as found by find and update the archive.

gzip

gzip <filename>

Compress file to <filename>.gz

gzip -c <filename>

Compress file to standard output. Can be used for log-rotation when the inode of the file should not change as the application keeps it open.

gzip -c <filename> > <filename>.gz; cp /dev/null <filename>

7zip

Available on most operating systems. Provides very good compression

7za a <archivename>.7z <files>

Add files to archive, create it when needed.

7za l <archivename>.7z

List an archive.

7za e <archivename>.7z <files>

Extract <files> from archive without path, all if <files> is omitted.

7za x <archivename>.7z

Extract <files> from archive with full path, all if <files> is omitted.