Various archive formats can be created, extracted, tested, listed, searched, compared, and repacked by patool. The advantage of patool is its simplicity in handling archive files without having to remember
myriad 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), ACE (.ace), ADF (.adf), ALZIP (.alz), APE (.ape), AR (.a), ARC (.arc), ARJ (.arj), bzip2 (.bz2),
CAB (.cab), COMPRESS (.Z), CPIO (.cpio), deb (.deb), DMS (.dms), FLAC (.flac), gzip (.gz), ISO (.iso), LRZIP (.lrz), LZH (.lha, .lzh), LZIP (.lz), LZMA (.lzma), LZOP (.lzo), RPM (.rpm), RAR (.rar), RZIP (.rz), SHN (.shn), tar (.tar), XZ (.xz), zip (.zip, .jar),
and ZOO (.zoo) formats. It relies on helper applications to handle those archive formats
(for example bzip2 for BZIP2 archives). The archive formats tar, zip, bzip2, and gzip are supported natively and do not require helper applications to be
installed.
