Motivation

                 Currently most people are working on a few diffrent operating systems. For instance, one person packs a bunch of files on Windows and another person may need to restore those files in Mac. Do we have appropriate tools to handle those overheads ?

                Internet is becoming more and more popular. There are many good stuffs  on the Internet. Those files are free for download. They are stored in one of  file formats, .tar, .zip, .gz, .Z, .hqx, etc. What kind of tools we can use to deal with those different file formats ?

UNIX, PC/Windows and Macintosh organize computer files is slightly different manners, but the true difference is in terminology. UNIX refers to directories, Windows and MacOS refer to folders. Both describe the hierarchical organization of files and many find it useful to pack a folder and all its subfolders or a directory and all its subdirectories into a single file that can be transported to another computing platform and unpacked them - with the file structure kept intact.

                File Archiving includes
                1) packing: pack a few files (may include directories) into a new file;
                2) unpacking: extract files (may include directores) from a packed file;
                3) compression: compress a file and save it into a new file;
                4) uncompression: extract file from a compressed file.
 
                The following four tables list some popular programs which do file archiving. All of those programs are either freeware or shareware.
 

Table 1 Programs for File Packing

Note: Each entry of this table is a program. The row show the program's running
platform and the column shows the file format that program will create after packing
file.
 

	.tar	.zip (both packing and compression)
Unix	Part of the UNIX OS (man tar for details) also GNU tar, PKZIP	PKZIP
Windows	GNU tar	WinZip, PKZIP
Mac	SunTAR Speranza's un-TAR	StuffIt Lite, ZipIt

 
Table 2 Programs for File Unpacking

Note: Each entry of this table is a program. The row show the program's running platform and the
column shows the file format that program is able to unpack.
 

	.tar	.zip (both unpacking and uncompression)
Unix	Part of UNIX OS, also GNU tar, PKZIP	PKZIP
Windows	WinZip, PKZIP	WinZip, PKZIP, StuffIt Expander
Mac	StuffIt Lite, StuffIt Expander	StuffIt Lite, StuffIt Expander, ZipIt

 

Table 3 Programs for File Compression

Note: Each entry of this table is a program. The row show the program's running platform and the
column shows the file format that program will create after compressing file.
 

	.Z	.gz	.gzip	.zip	.hqx
Unix	Part of UNIX OS	GNU compress	GNU gzip	GNU zip	?
Windows	?	GNU compress	GNU gzip	WinZip, PKZIP	GNU zip
Mac	?	?	?	StuffIt Lite, ZipIt	StuffIt Lite

 

Table 4 Programs for File Uncompression

Note: Each entry of this table is a program. The row show the program's running platform and the
column shows the file format the program is able to uncompress.
 

	.Z	.gz	.gzip	.zip	.hqx
Unix	GNU uncompress	GNU uncompress	GNU gunzip, PKZIP	GNU unzip	PKZIP
Windows	WinZip	WinZip	WinZip, PKZIP	WinZip, PKZIP, StuffIt Expander	StuffIt Lite, StuffIt Expander, PKZIP
Mac	StuffIt Lite	StuffIt Lite	StuffIt Lite	StuffIt Lite, StuffIt Expander, ZipIt	StuffIt Lite, StuffIt Expander

 

Links to Useful Information
 

• Common Internet File Formats covers almost all file formats commonly found on the Internet, includings filename extensions such as .hqx,, .arj, .ps, .tar, .Z, .zip, .sit, and so on. It explains what each is and has links to software for dealing with each file type. This is the most comprehensive resource about this topic I have found by far.

• A Mac Telecommunication FAQ . Part of it covers the comparison between different tools for different file packaging formats on a few platforms. A comparison table is shown.

• This lengthy Compression FAQ covers compression information for all platforms, including background information and comparisons between different file formats.