TL;DR — Quick Summary

ouch compresses and decompresses files effortlessly. Auto-detects formats — tar, zip, gz, bz2, xz, zstd, 7z, rar. No flags to remember, just ouch.

ouch makes compression painless. No flags to remember — just the file.

Installation

# Cargo
cargo install ouch

# Homebrew
brew install ouch

# Arch
pacman -S ouch

Usage

# Decompress — auto-detects format
ouch decompress archive.tar.gz
ouch decompress file.zip
ouch decompress data.tar.zst

# Compress files
ouch compress file1 file2 dir/ output.tar.gz
ouch compress src/ backup.zip
ouch compress logs/ logs.tar.zst

# List archive contents
ouch list archive.tar.gz

# Decompress to specific directory
ouch decompress archive.zip --dir output/

Comparison

Tasktar/zip/etc.ouch
Extract .tar.gztar -xvf file.tar.gzouch d file.tar.gz
Create .zipzip -r out.zip dir/ouch c dir/ out.zip
Extract .tar.zsttar --zstd -xf f.tar.zstouch d f.tar.zst

Summary

  • ouch: painless compression/decompression
  • Auto-detects all common formats
  • Single command for everything — no flags
  • Supports tar, zip, gz, bz2, xz, zstd, 7z, rar
  • Written in Rust — fast and reliable