Archiving and compression

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The traditional Unix archiving and compression tools are separated according to the Unix philosophy:

A file archiver combines several files into one archive file, e.g. tar.
A compression tool compresses and decompresses data, e.g. gzip.

These tools are often used in sequence by firstly creating an archive file and then compressing it.

Of course there are also tools that do both, which tend to additionally offer encryption, error detection and recovery.

Archiving only

Name	Package	Manuals	Description
GNU tar	tar	tar(1), info	Core utility for manipulating the ubiquitous tar archives (tarballs), which are used by pacman and the AUR.
libarchive	libarchive	bsdtar(1) bsdcpio(1)	Implementation of tar and cpio that also offers a library. Used by pacman and mkinitcpio.
ar	binutils	ar(1)	Legacy Unix archiver before tar. Today only used for creating static library files.
cpio	cpio	cpio(1)	File archiver via stdin/stdout, supports cpio and tar formats.
DAR	dar^AUR	dar(1)	Archiver to backup large live filesystems, takes care of hard links, extended attributes, sparse files and inode types.

This article or section needs expansion.

Reason: Are other compression algorithms such as lz4, lzop and zstd also supported by both implementations? (Discuss in Talk:Archiving and compression)

Tip: Both GNU and BSD tar automatically do decompression delegation for bzip2, compress, gzip, lzip, lzma, lzop, zstd, and xz compressed archives. When creating archives both support the -a switch to automatically filter the created archive through the right compression program based on the file extension. While BSD tar recognizes compression formats based on the format, GNU tar only guesses based on the file extension.

Compression tools

Compression only

These compression programs implement their own file format.

Name	Package	Manual	Ext	Tar ext	Description	Parallel implementations
bzip2	bzip2	bzip2(1)	.bz2, .bz	.tbz2, .tbz	Uses the Burrows–Wheeler algorithm.	lbzip2, pbzip2
gzip	gzip	gzip(1)	.gz, .z	.tgz, .taz	GNU zip, based on DEFLATE algorithm.	pigz
lrzip	lrzip	lrzip(1)	.lrz		Improved version of rzip, uses multiple algorithms.	is multithreaded
LZ4	lz4	lz4(1)	.lz4		Written in C, focused on compression and decompression speed.	is multithreaded
lzip	lzip	lzip(1)	.lz		Uses LZMA.	plzip^AUR
lzop	lzop	lzop(1)	.lzop	.tzo	Uses the LZO library (lzo).
xz	xz	xz(1)	.xz, .lzma	.txz, .tlz	Uses LZMA, default for GNU coreutils and kernel archive files.	is multithreaded, pixz, pxz-git^AUR
zstd	zstd	zstd(1)	.zst		Uses Zstandard algorithm.	is multithreaded

Parallel implementations offer improved speeds by using multiple CPU cores.
Tar extensions refers to compressed archives where tar and the compression tool is used, e.g. .tzo is .tar.lzo.
See also #Compression only usage.

Archiving and compression

Name	Packages	Manuals	Ext	Description
p7zip	p7zip	7z(1)	.7z	POSIX port of 7-zip's command-line.
RAR	rar^AUR, unrar	rar(1)	.rar	Both the format and the rar utility are proprietary.
ZIP	zip, unzip	zip(1), unzip(1)	.zip	Widely used outside of the Linux world.
Unarchiver	unarchiver	unar(1), lsar(1)	many	Command-line tool of a Mac application, supports over 40 archive formats.
ZPAQ	zpaq^AUR	zpaq(1)	.zpaq	A high compression ratio archiver written in C++, uses several algorithms.
LHa	lhasa, lha^AUR	lha(1)	.lzh (on Amiga: .lha)	LZH/LHA archiver, supports the lh7-method.

Feature charts

Some of the tools above are capable of handling multiple formats, allowing for fewer installed packages.

Decompress

Name	gzip	bzip2	ZIP	LHa/LZH	RAR	compress	pack	CAB	ARJ
gzip	Yes	No	Partial¹	No	No	Yes	Yes	No	No
p7zip	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
unarchiver	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	No	Yes	Partial

gzip's gunzip can only decompress single member ZIP files.

Usage comparison

Archiving only usage

Name	Create archive	Extract archive	List content
tar(1)	`tar cfv archive.tar file1 file2`	`tar xfv archive.tar`	`tar -tvf archive.tar`
cpio(1)	`ls file1 file2 \| cpio -o > archive.cpio`	`cpio -i -vd < archive.cpio`	`cpio -t < archive.cpio`

Compression only usage

Name	Compress	Decompress	Decompress to stdout
bzip2(1)	`bzip2 file`	`bzip2 -d file.bz2`	`bzcat file.bz2`
gzip(1)	`gzip file`	`gzip -d file.gz`	`zcat file.gz`
lrzip(1)	`lrzip file` `lrztar folder`	`lrzip -d file.lrz` `lrztar -d folder.tar.lrz`	`lrzcat file.lrz`
xz(1)	`xz file`	`xz -d file.xz`	`xzcat file.xz`

Archiving and compression usage

Name	Compress	Decompress	Decompress to stdout	List content
7z(1)	`7z a archive.7z file1 file2`	`7z x archive.7z`	`7z e -so archive.7z file1`	`7z l archive.7z`
rar(1) & unrar	`rar a archive.rar file1 file2`	`rar x archive.rar`	`rar p -inul archive.rar file1`	`rar l archive.rar`
zip(1), unzip(1)	`zip archive.zip file1 file2`	`unzip archive.zip`	`unzip -p archive.zip file1`	`unzip -l archive.zip`
lha(1)	`lha ao7 archive.lzh file1 file2`	`lha x archive.lzh`		minimal: `lha l archive.lzh` verbose: `lha v archive.lzh`

Convenience tools

atool — Script for managing file archives of various types.

https://www.nongnu.org/atool/ || atool

dtrx — An intelligent archive extraction tool.

https://github.com/brettcs/dtrx || dtrx^AUR

unp — Command line tool that can unpack archives easily.

https://github.com/mitsuhiko/unp || python-unp^AUR

unpack — Wrapper script for handling multiple archive formats.

https://github.com/githaff/unpack || unpack-git^AUR

Bash/Functions#Extract

Determining archive format

To extract an archive, its file format needs to be determined. If the file is properly named you can deduce its format from the file extension.

Otherwise you can use the file tool, see file(1).

Esoteric, rare or deprecated tools

Name	Packages	Ext	Description
ARC	arc^AUR	.arc, .ark	Was very popular during the early days of the dial-up BBS. Superseded by ZIP.
ARJ	arj	.arj	An archiver used on DOS/Windows in mid-1990s. This is an open source clone.
compress	ncompress	.Z	The classic unix compression utility which can handle the ancient .Z archive.
PAR2	par2cmdline	.par2	Parity archiver for increased data integrity. See also Parchive.
shar	sharutils	.shar	Creates self-extracting archives that are valid shell scripts.
Zoo	zoo^AUR	.zoo	Was mostly popular on the OpenVMS operating system before PKZIP became popular.

Device mapper compression

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Reason: Do not use indefinite time references such as "recently", see Help:Style#Language register. (Discuss in Talk:Archiving and compression)

There is work being done to mainline (integrate into the Linux kernel project) the recently open-sourced VDO project, which provides a deduplication and compression device mapper layer in the interest of increasing storage efficiency. The following packages are available: