File archiver

More advanced archivers store additional metadata, such as the original timestamps, file attributes or access control lists.

Reconstructing the original files from the archive is termed unarchiving, unpacking or extracting.

[1] The Unix tools ar, tar, and cpio act as archivers but not compressors.

The filename extensions are successively added at each step of this process.

This approach has two goals: This approach, however, has disadvantages too: The built-in archiver of Microsoft Windows as well as third-party archiving software, such as WinRAR and 7-zip, often use a graphical user interface.