How to compress and decompress files in bash

There are available more commands to compress and decompress file in bash. Some of them are: 

• tar 
• zip / unzip
• rar / unrar
• gzip
• bzip2

Tar and untar 

To create a tar.gz from bash shell you can use the following command:

$ tar -zcvf myarchive.tar.gz mydirectory

Instead to extract the files from an archive:

$ tar -xvf myarchive.tar.gz

Zip and unzip 

Create an archive form a text file:

$ zip myarchive.zip myfile.txt

Create an archive form a directory:

$ zip -r myarchive.zip mydirectory

Create an archive with the subdirectories and files into a directory (without it):

$ zip -r -D myarchive.zip mydirectory

Extraction of files and directories from an archive:

$ unzip myarchive.zip

Extraction and overwrite the files and directories from an archive:

$ unzip -o myarchive.zip

Extraction the files and directories from an archive to a target directory

$ unzip myarchive.zip -d mydirectory

Rar and unrar

Create a new rar archive myarchive.rar containing myfile.txt

$ rar a myarchive.rar myfile.txt

Create a new rar archive myarchive.rar containing a directory

$ rar a myarchive.rar mydirectory/

Create a new rar archive that splits the file/files into multiple parts of equal size (10 MB)

$ rar a -v10M -R myarchive.rar mydirectory/

Extraction the files and directories from an archive:

$ unrar e myarchive.rar

List the content of a rar file without uncompressing it

$ unrar l myarchive.rar

Gzip 

The command `gzip' is designed as a complement to `tar', not as a replacement. Instead the command`gunzip' can currently decompress files created by `gzip', `zip', `compress' or `pack'. The detection of the input format is automatic. 

Create an archive form a text file:

$ gzip myfile.txt

Decompress the archive created in previous step:

$ gzip myfile.gz

Bzip2

Bzip2 compresses files using the Burrows-Wheeler block sorting text compression algorithm, and Huffman coding. The command-line options are deliberately very similar to those of GNU gzip, but they are not identical. 

Create an archive form a text file:

$ bzip2 myfile.txt

Decompress the archive created in previous step:

$ bunzip2 myfile.txt.bz2

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