Packing and Unpacking Files
Packing files
To pack means to unite several files in one file, called an archive. Practically the data can be compressed in the same step. There are two ways to del with compressed files:
1- GUI tools (with Graphical user interface):
- Ark: default archive manager of KDE.
- Archive Manager(Formerly known as File Roller): the default manager of GNOME.
- Engrampa: the default archive manager of MATE desktop environment.
- Xarchiver: the default archive manager of lightweight desktop environment like Xfce and LXDE
- PeaZip: a cross-platform archive manager. In addition to Linux, this tool also supports other operating systems including Windows and macOS.
2- Command line tools and commands:
Typical commands for packing under Linux are
- zip -- for .zip files
Example:
zip -r targetfile sourcedirectory
- tar -- for .tar and .tar.gz files
Example (creates a .tar.gz file):
tar cvzf targetfile.tar.gz sourcedirectory
- bzip2 -- for .bz2 files
Example:
bzip2 sourcefile
Unpacking files
How to unpack files depends on their suffix:
- .tar.gz
unpack with the command
tar xvzf archive.tar.gz
where archive is the archive's name without suffix
- .tar
unpack with the command
tar xvf archive.tar
where archive is the archive's name without suffix
- .zip
unpack with the command
unzip archive.zip
where archive is the archive's name without suffix
- .bz2
unpack with the command
bunzip2 archive.bz2
where archive is the archive's name without suffix
- .rar
unpack with the command
unrar x archive.rar
where archive is the archive's name without suffix
Many more archive formats exist. Most of them are recognized by file_unpack