You could just use bsdtar from libarchive, which handles all the compression and archive formats automatically without additional tools. https://github.com/lib

You could just use bsdtar from libarchive, which handles all the compression and archive formats automatically without additional tools. https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/wiki/LibarchiveFormats https://github.com/libarchive/libarchive/wiki/LibarchiveForm... GNU tar is so limited, but unfortunately still the default on most systems.