unp(1)

unp1

A shell frontend for uncompressing/unpacking tools

Usage

unp [-u] file [files ...] [-- backend args ...] ucat file [files ...]

Usage

unp extracts one or more files given as arguments on the command line. Additionally, it may pass some options to the backend tools (like tar options) when they are appended after `--´.

There is also a special option (-u) which is very useful for extracting Debian packages. Using -u, unp extracts the package (i.e. the ar archive) first, then extracts data.tar.gz in the current directory and then control.tar.gz in control/<filename>/.

Notes

unp will try to decompress into a FILE.unp if it get trouble with existing files. But don't count on this feature, always look for free working space before using unp.

Unlike gunzip, which decompresses the file in the target directory of the source file, unp uses the current directory for output.

Releases

12 releases since Debian 3.1 (Sarge); the text changed 4 times.

  1. 3.1–4.0
  2. 5.0–11
  3. 12
  4. 13
  5. Arch

Author

Development started by Andre Karwath <[email protected]>
Now maintained and packaged for Debian by Eduard Bloch <[email protected]>

From unp 1:2.0-2 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.