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. There is also a manpage, tar(5), that provides an excellent description of the various tar file formats.