Linux file compression

Note: tar and zip -r operate similarly on directories; they wrap an entire directory into a single compressed archive file. gzip -r, on the other hand, recursively goes through the directory structure and compresses individual files, replacing them with their .gz counterparts.

Please see specific man pages for the following:

• tar
• zip
• 7zip

To decompress a .Z file:

uncompress file.Z

To decompress a .bz2 file:

bunzip2 file.bz2

To create a jar archive from all class files in the current directory:

jar cf new-archive.jar *.class

To decompress a jar file:

tar xf file.jar

To decompress a 7-zip file (may need to install p7zip-full package):

7za e file.7z