Single library to read/write tar, cpio, pax, zip, iso9660, etc. The libarchive library provides a flexible interface for reading and writing streaming archive files such as tar and cpio. The library is inherently stream-oriented; readers serially iterate through the archive, writers serially add things to the archive. In particular, note that there is no built-in support for random access nor for in-place modification. libarchive can read at least five tar formats, four cpio formats, ISO9660 CD/DVD images (including RockRidge extensions), and ZIP files. libarchive can write two tar formats (ustar and pax), one cpio format (odc/POSIX), and two types of shar files (with and without uuencoding). The bsdtar Debian package, which is the default tar(1) on FreeBSD, is built using libarchive. The bsdcpio Debian package is also built using libarchive. There is also a manpage, tar(5), in libarchive1 that provides an excellent description of the various tar file formats.