Ouch!

ouch stands for Obvious Unified Compression Helper, and works on Linux, Mac OS and Windows.

It is a CLI tool to compress and decompress files that aims on ease of usage.

• Usage
  • Decompressing
  • Compressing
• Installation
  • Latest binary
  • Compiling from source
• Supported Formats
• Contributing

Usage

Decompressing

Run ouch and pass compressed files as arguments.

# Decompress 'a.zip'
ouch a.zip

# Decompress multiple files
ouch a.zip b.tar.gz

You can redirect the decompression results to a folder with the -o/--output flag.

# Create 'pictures' folder and decompress inside of it
ouch a.zip -o pictures

Compressing

Use the compress subcommand.

Accepts multiple files and folders, the last argument shall be the output file.

# Compress four files into 'archive.zip'
ouch compress 1 2 3 4 archive.zip

# Compress folder and video into 'videos.tar.gz'
ouch compress videos/ meme.mp4 videos.tar.gz

# Compress one file using 4 compression formats
ouch compress file.txt compressed.gz.xz.bz.zst

# Compress all the files in current folder
ouch compress * files.zip

ouch checks for the extensions of the output file to decide which formats should be used.

Installation

Downloading the latest binary

WARNING: SCRIPT TEMPORARILY DISABLED.

This script downloads the latest binary and copies it to /usr/bin.

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/vrmiguel/ouch/master/install.sh | sh

Installing from source code

For compiling, check the wiki guide.

Supported formats

	.tar	.zip	.bz, .bz2	.gz	.xz, .lz, .lzma	.7z
Decompression	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✗
Compression	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✗

Note that formats can be chained:

• .tar.gz
• .tar.xz
• .tar.gz.xz
• .tar.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz.lz.lz.lz.lz.lz.lz.lz.lz.lz.lz.bz.bz.bz.bz.bz.bz.bz
• .gz.xz
• etc...

Contributing

ouch is 100% made out of voluntary work, any small contribution is welcome!

• Open an issue.
• Open a pr.
• Share it to a friend.