Ubuntu – utility to extract/compress files using any type of archiving algorithm

7ziparchivecommand line

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

Best 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
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