ouch/README.md

Ouch!

ouch stands for Obvious Unified Compression Helper, it's a CLI tool to compress and decompress files.

• Features
• Usage
• Installation
• Supported Formats
• Benchmarks
• Contributing

Features

1. Easy to use.
2. Automatic format detection.
3. Same syntax, various formats.
4. Encoding and decoding streams, it's fast.
5. No runtime dependencies (for Linux x86_64).
6. Listing archive contents with tree formatting (in next release!).

Usage

Decompressing

Use the decompress subcommand and pass the files.

# Decompress one
ouch decompress a.zip

# Decompress multiple
ouch decompress a.zip b.tar.gz c.tar

# Short alternative
ouch d a.zip

The -d/--dir flag can be used to redirect decompression results to another directory.

# Decompress 'summer_vacation.zip' inside of new folder 'pictures'
ouch decompress summer_vacation.zip --dir pictures

Compressing

Use the compress subcommand, pass the files and the output file at the end.

# Compress four files/folders
ouch compress 1 2 3 4 archive.zip

# Short alternative
ouch c file.txt file.zip

# Compress everything in the current folder again and again
ouch compress * everything.tar.gz.xz.bz.zst.gz.gz.gz.gz.gz

ouch detects the extensions of the output file to decide what formats to use.

Installation

Downloading the latest binary

Compiled for x86_64 on Linux, Mac OS and Windows, run with curl or wget.

Method	Command
curl	curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ouch-org/ouch/master/install.sh | sh
wget	wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ouch-org/ouch/master/install.sh -O - | sh

The script will copy the latest binary to /usr/local/bin.

Installing from source code

Check the wiki guide.

Supported formats

Format	.tar	.zip	.bz, .bz2	.gz	.lz4	.xz, .lz, .lzma	.zst
Supported	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓	✓

And the aliases: tgz, tbz, tbz2, tlz4, txz, tlz, tlzma, tzst.

Formats can be chained (ouch keeps it fast):

• .gz.xz.bz.zst
• .tar.gz.xz.bz.zst
• .tar.gz.gz.gz.gz.xz.xz.xz.xz.bz.bz.bz.bz.zst.zst.zst.zst

Benchmarks

Comparison made decompressing linux.tar.gz and measured with hyperfine, times are the average.

Tool	ouch	tar	bsdtar
Average time	911 ms	1102 ms	829 ms

Note: ouch focuses heavily on usage ergonomics and nice error messages, but we plan on doing some optimization in the future.

Versions used:

• ouch 0.3.1
• tar 1.34
• bsdtar 3.5.2

Contributing

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

• Open an issue.
• Open a pull request.
• Share it to a friend!