arx

arx

View and extract archives of various types. Handles compression and archive formats automatically.

Relies on the appropriate tools being installed on your system to handle each format. For example, .tar.bz2 requires bzip2 and tar to be installed to work properly.

Usage

arx archive.tar.gz          # List contents (default)
arx l archive.tar.gz        # List contents
arx list archive.tar.gz     # List contents
arx extract archive.tar.gz  # Extract to current directory
arx x archive.tar.gz ./dir  # Extract to a specific directory

If no arguments are provided, arx shows help. If only an archive argument is provided, arx attempts to list files in the archive (if supported by the underlying tool). Some formats may not support listing.

Commands

Command	Description	Arguments
list, l	List available files (default)	file-name
extract, x	Extract all files	file-name [path-to]

Options

Option	Description
-v, --version	Show version
-h, --help	Show help

Supported formats

Tar archives:

Extension	Description
.tar.br	Brotli compressed tar archive
.tar.bz2	Bzip2 compressed tar archive
.tar.gz	Gzip compressed tar archive
.tar.xz	XZ compressed tar archive
.tar.zst	Zstandard compressed tar archive
.tar	Uncompressed tar archive
.tbz2	Bzip2 compressed tar archive
.tgz	Gzip compressed tar archive

Archives:

Extension	Description
.7z	7-Zip archive
.deb	Debian package
.rar	RAR archive
.zip	ZIP archive

Single files:

Extension	Description
.br	Brotli compressed file
.bz2	Bzip2 compressed file
.gz	Gzip compressed file
.xz	XZ compressed file
.zst	Zstandard compressed file
.Z	Compress (LZW) compressed file

Sibling: cxop

For the inverse direction — producing .gz/.br/.zst sibling variants from arbitrary sources for HTTP Accept-Encoding content negotiation — see cxop. arx does decomposition (list + extract); cxop does composition (produce variants). Together they cover both directions of single-file compression.