How To Extract Zip, Gz, Tar, Bz2, 7z, Xz and Rar File in Linux

An archive file is a file composed of one or more files in compressed format. It’s useful for saving disk storage, managing a single file is easier than managing multiple files. This tutorial will help you to decompress or extract an archive file in the Linux system via command line. You can also list archive file content without extracting it.

Extract .zip file in Linux

This is the most common compression format used by various IT professions on many operating systems. For this you must of unzip binary installed on your system.

unzip filename.zip

• How to Create Zip Excluding Specific Files & Directories

Extract .gz file in Linux

Gz files are compressed files created using the Gzip compression utility. In general, GZIP is better compared to ZIP, in terms of compression, especially when compressing a huge number of files. Use gunzip command to extract .gz archive file.

gunzip filename.gz

Extract .tar file in Linux

Tar is the sort of Tape Archive and also referred to as the tarball. This is another popular archiving method which is also known as the consolidated Unix archive format. To extract .tar file use following command

tar -xvf filename.tar

• How to Create Tar Excluding Specific Files & Directories

Extract .tar.gz file in Linux

TAR.GZ file is a combination of TAR and GZIP archives. If provides more compression format of data. You can use -z switch to extract these files.

tar -xzf filename.tar.gz

Extract .tar.xz file in Linux

The XZ format is a single file compression format and does not offer archiving capabilities. It preserves the original data with no loss in quality. You can use -J switch to extract these files.

tar -xJf filename.tar.xz

Extract .tar.bz2 file in Linux

Tar.bz2 is an combination of tar and bzip2 archive formats. You can use -j to filter the archive through bzip2. Use the following to extract .tar.bz2 compressed file.

tar -xjf filename.tar.bz2

The latest version fo tar automatically detects the archive format. So you can simply use the following command.

tar -xf filename.tar.gz

Extract .7z file in Linux

These files are 7zip archive files. This is not generally used on Linux systems, but sometimes you may need to extract some source files. You must have the 7zip package installed on your system. Use the following command to extract these files.

7z x filename.7z

Extract .rar file in Linux

These are common archive format for Windows systems, but Linux users avoid to use this. Still you may need sometimes to extract .rar file on Linux. You can use 7z command to extract this or unrar.

7z x filename.rar         # Using 7zip 
unrar x filename.rar      # Using Unrar 

Reference:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archive_file