Question

6

Is there a utility to extract/compress files using any type of archiving algorithm?

rated 0 times [ 6] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 1466 / 2 Years ago, sat, june 12, 2021, 9:26:01

Usually I use tar for *.tar archives, zip/unzip for *.zip, 7z for *.7z , etc... Is there an über utility that combine all algorithms?

Here is pseudo usage of this utility:

Extracting:

$ unpack *.tar -d /home/c0rp/this_is_tar

$ unpack *.rar -d /home/c0rp/this_is_rar

$ unpack *.tar.gz -d /home/c0rp/this_is_targz

$ unpack *.zip -d /home/c0rp/this_is_zip

$ unpack *.7z -d /home/c0rp/this_is_7z

Compressing:

$ pack some_name.tar /home/c0rp/for_tar1 /home/c0rp/for_tar2

$ pack some_name.rar /home/c0rp/for_rar1 /home/c0rp/for_rar2

$ pack some_name.tar.gz /home/c0rp/for_targz1 /home/c0rp/for_targz2

$ pack some_name.zip /home/c0rp/for_zip1 /home/c0rp/for_zip2

$ pack some_name.7z /home/c0rp/for_zip1 /home/c0rp/for_7z

Answers

Only authorized users can answer the question. Please sign in first, or register a free account.

herriail

Add To Favorites

Follow

Total Points: 11

Total Questions: 122

Total Answers: 118

Location: Peru

Member since Tue, Mar 16, 2021

3 Years ago

answered 2 Years ago rtbrbab · Accepted Answer

I just realized that 7-Zip (command 7z) can do it. 7-Zip is able to extract and compress many types of archives. Here is a quote from man 7z:

DESCRIPTION

    7-Zip is a file archiver with the highest compression ratio. The pro-

    gram supports 7z (that implements LZMA compression algorithm), LZMA2,

    XZ, ZIP, Zip64, CAB, RAR (if the non-free p7zip-rar package is

    installed), ARJ, GZIP, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM, ISO, most filesystem

    images and DEB formats...

7-Zip can extract/compress archives and is detecting the compressing algorithm itself.

This should work as you are expecting:

Compressing

$ 7z a file.tar.gz file

$ 7z a file.zip file

$ 7z a file.7z file

$ 7z a file.gzip file

Extracting

$ 7z x file.tar.gz

$ 7z x file.zip

$ 7z x file.7z

$ 7z x file.gzip

Also here is a little test. Here I create five archives and give them different filename extensions.

$ cd /tmp

$ touch testfile

$ for alg in {zip,gzip,7z,tar.gz,rar};do 7z a testfile."$alg" testfile;done

$ ls testfile*

testfile.7z

testfile.gzip

testfile.rar

testfile.tar.gz

testfile.zip

Now to detect the compressing algorithm, I will use the binwalk utility.

$ for arch in testfile.*;do binwalk "$arch" | sed -n '4p' | awk {'print $3'};done

7-zip

gzip

7-zip

gzip

Zip