PowerShell: unzip, untar, extract 7z etc

By Xah Lee. Date: 2021-07-02. Last updated: 2022-10-26.

Here's how to decompress, unarchive, extract, zip, tar, 7z etc files.

unzip

# unarchive to current dir
Expand-Archive xyz.zip

# specify a output dir
Expand-Archive -Path ~/xyz.zip -DestinationPath  c:/Users/xah/out/

# literal input path
Expand-Archive -LiteralPath c:/Users/xah/xyz.zip

by default, Expand-Archive will create a parent folder to contain the archive.
To not create a parent folder, use -PassThru
if -DestinationPath is not given, it expands to the current directory.

example script:

# unzip all *nb.zip files to a dir named x
dir * -Recurse -Include "*nb.zip" | Expand-Archive -PassThru -DestinationPath x

Windows 10 has BSD tar builtin, at C:/Windows/system32/tar.exe

# extract .tar file
tar xvf filename.tar

# extract .tar.gz (.tgz) file
tar xvfz filename.tar.gz

# extract .tar.bz2 file
tar xvfj filename.tar.bz2

# extract .tar.xz file
tar xvfJ filename.tar.xz

You have to install 7z. ([ https://www.7-zip.org/ ])

# extract to full paths of items
7z x filename

# extract .lz file
lzip -d filename