I'll introduce two commonly used archiving commands in Unix-like operating systems: zip and tar. These commands are essential for compressing files and directories, making it easier to store and transfer them.

Zip Command Syntax

zip [options] [filename.zip] [file_to_zip]

Options

Options	Description	Syntax
-r	Recursively zip a directory	zip -r [filename.zip] [dir_name]
-x	Explicitly exclude the specified files	zip -r [filename.zip] [dir_name] -x [excluded_file]
-m	Move the original files into the archive	zip -m [filename.zip] [file_to_zip]

Examples

1. Zipping files

   zip archive.zip file1.txt file2.txt
   

2. Zipping a directory while excluding some subdirectories

   zip -r archive.zip . -x "node_modules/*"
   

   For a large number of exclusions, a file can be used to list the patterns.

   zip -r archive.zip . -x @exclude.lst
   

   In this case, exclude.lst would contain one pattern per line, and zip would exclude files matching those patterns.

3. Zipping files and moving them into the archive

   zip -m documents.zip *.txt
   

Tar Command Syntax

tar [options] [archive_name.tar] [file_to_archive]

Options

The -f option is mandatory to specify the archive file name. Without it, tar will try to write this archive to the default output device (typically /dev/rmt0 or standard output)

Options	Description	Syntax
-c	Create a new archive	tar -cf [archive_name.tar] [file_to_archive]
-z	Compress with gzip	tar -czf [archive_name.tar.gz] [file_to_archive]
-x	Extract files	tar -xf [archive_name.tar]
-v	Verbose output	tar -xvf [archive_name.tar]
-C	Change to [directory] before performing operations	tar -C [directory] -xzf [archive_name.tar.gz]

Combining options or skipping dash is common, e.g. tar Cxzf output_dir archive.tar.gz is the same as tar -C output_dir -xzf archive.tar.gz

Examples

1. Create a new .tar.gz archive

   tar -czf archive.tar.gz file1.txt file2.txt
   

2. Extract a .tar.gz archive

   tar -xzf archive.tar.gz
   

   Or, extract specific files (file1.txt and file2.txt) from the archive:

   tar -xzf archive.tar.gz file1.txt file2.txt
   

Browsing Archive Files

To browse the contents of a zip, tar, or tar.gz file using Vim or Neovim, you can simply open the them with either editor. These editors have built-in support for browsing zip archives.

# e.g.
vim filename.zip
nvim filename.tar.gz