Patool

Patool is a portable archive file manager for the command line.

Various archive formats can be created, extracted, tested, listed, searched, repacked and compared with patool. The advantage of patool is its simplicity in handling archive files without having to remember a myriad of programs and options.

The archive format is determined by the file(1) program and as a fallback by the archive file extension.

Patool supports 7z (.7z, .cb7), ACE (.ace, .cba), ADF (.adf), ALZIP (.alz), APE (.ape), AR (.a), ARC (.arc), ARJ (.arj), BZIP2 (.bz2), BZIP3 (.bz3), CAB (.cab), CHM (.chm), COMPRESS (.Z), CPIO (.cpio), DEB (.deb), DMS (.dms), FLAC (.flac), FREEARC (.arc), GZIP (.gz), ISO (.iso), LRZIP (.lrz), LZH (.lha, .lzh), LZIP (.lz), LZMA (.lzma), LZOP (.lzo), RPM (.rpm), RAR (.rar, .cbr), RZIP (.rz), SHN (.shn), TAR (.tar, .cbt), UDF (.udf), XZ (.xz), ZIP (.zip, .jar, .cbz), ZOO (.zoo) and ZSTANDARD (.zst) archive formats.

The archive formats TAR, ZIP, BZIP2, LZMA and GZIP are supported natively. When using Python >= 3.14 the ZSTANDARD archive format is also supported natively.

Other formats require archive programs as helper applications to handle those formats (for example xz for XZ (.xz) archives). The installation instructions (see below) list suggested archive programs.

Examples

# Extract several archives with different formats
patool extract archive.zip otherarchive.rar

# Extract archive with password
patool extract --password somepassword archive.rar

# Test archive integrity
patool test --verbose dist.tar.gz

# List files stored in an archive
patool list package.deb

# Create a new archive
patool create --verbose /path/to/myfiles.zip file1.txt dir/

# Create a new archive with password
patool create --verbose --password somepassword /path/to/myfiles.zip file1.txt dir/

# Show differences between two archives
patool diff release1.0.tar.gz release2.0.zip

# Search for text inside archives
patool search "def urlopen" python-3.3.tar.gz

# Repackage an archive in a different format
patool repack linux-2.6.33.tar.gz linux-2.6.33.tar.bz2

Website

See [https://wummel.github.io/patool/] for more info and downloads.

Installation and archive programs

See doc/install.md for detailed install instructions and a list of suggested archive programs.

API

You can use patool functions from other Python applications. Log output uses a Python logging handler named "patool" and is configured to print output to sys.stderr. On errors, PatoolError will be raised. Note that extra options or customization for specific archive programs are not supported.

import patoolib
patoolib.extract_archive("archive.zip", outdir="/tmp")
patoolib.test_archive("dist.tar.gz", verbosity=1)
patoolib.list_archive("package.deb")
patoolib.create_archive("/path/to/myfiles.zip", ("file1.txt", "dir/"))
patoolib.diff_archives("release1.0.tar.gz", "release2.0.zip")
patoolib.search_archive("def urlopen", "python3.3.tar.gz")
patoolib.repack_archive("linux-2.6.33.tar.gz", "linux-2.6.33.tar.bz2")
patoolib.is_archive("package.deb")

See [https://wummel.github.io/patool/] for detailed API documentation.

Test suite

Patool has extensive unit tests to ensure code quality. The tests are run on each code push on different platforms and python versions.

Bash completion

Install the argcomplete python package eg. on Debian/Ubuntu with apt-get install python3-argcomplete, then run eval "$(register-python-argcomplete patool)" in your shell. After that typing patool, a <SPACE> and then <TAB> lists available options and commands.

Development

See doc/development.md.