---
layout: page
category-title: Intermediate commands
category-page: intermediate
tags: 
author: Andrea Brites Marto
title: 7z
---
<p>
	A .7z. file is an archive format that stands for 7-zip. By default, Mac OS X does not know how to handle these files, but that is not a big deal because you can download for free in App Store. The program supports 7z, ZIP, CAB, ARJ, BZIP2, TAR, CPIO, RPM and DEB.<br>

	So, first of all, you need to download Unarchiver in order to use this command.<br>

	The basic syntax is:
</p>

<pre>
	7z [adeltux] [-] [SWITCH] <code>&lt;ARCHIVE_NAME&gt; &lt;ARGUMENTS&gt;</code>
</pre>

Here some useful options that we will use to explain some examples:

<ul>
	<li><i>a</i> Add</li>
	<li><i>d</i> Delete</li>
	<li><i>e</i> Extract</li>
	<li><i>l</i> List</li>
	<li><i>t</i> Test</li>
	<li><i>u</i> Update</li>
	<li><i>x</i> Extract with full paths</li>
</ul>

The simplest way to use <code>7z</code> if we want to extracts all files from archive archive.zip to the current directory.

<pre>
	7z e archive.zip
</pre>

Well, now we talk about the switches.
There are many type of switches, we will see the most common ones.

<h1>-m (Set compression Method)</h1>

<p>Specifies the compression method</p>
<pre>
	-m&lt;method_parameters&gt;
</pre>

The format for this switch depends on the archive type which are:
<ul>
	<li>Zip</li>
	<li>GZip</li>
	<li>BZip2</li>
	<li>7z</li>
	<li>XZ</li>
	<li>WIM</li>
</ul>

<h1>-r (Recurse subdirectories) switch</h1>

<p>Specifies the method of treating filenames or wildcards on the command line.</p>
The syntax:

<pre>
	-r[- | 0]
</pre>

<table>
	<tr>
		<td> Switch </td>
		<td> Description </td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td> -r </td>
		<td> Enable recurse subdirectories </td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td> -r- </td>
		<td> Disable recurse subdirectories. This is the default option. </td>
	</tr>
	<tr>
		<td> -r0 </td>
		<td> Enable recurse subdirectories only for wildcard names </td>
	</tr>
</table>

<p>
	If we want to list all *.doc files that belong to the archived root directory in the <i>archive.zip</i> archive, we can do as follows:
</p>

<pre>
	7z l archive.zip *.doc -r-
</pre>

<h1>-p (Set password) switch</h1>

<p>Specifies a password</p>
Here the syntax is very simple:

<pre>
	-p{password}
</pre>

If we want to protect some files we can compress for example all *.txt files to archive.7z using a password as "cimbale".

<pre>
	7z a archive.7z -pcimbale
</pre>

Then if we want to extracts all files from archive.7z we need the password "cimbale".

<pre>
	7z x archive.7z -pcimbale
</pre>

<h1> -x (Exclude filenames) switch </h1>

<p>
	Specifes which filenames or wildcards must be excluded from the operation.
</p>
Syntax:

<pre>
	-x[&lt;recurse_type&gt;]&lt;file_ref&gt;
</pre>

Sometimes we need to add files into an archive.7z, except one, this can be done as fllows:

<pre>
	7z a -tzip archive.7z *.txt -x!temp.*
</pre>

<p>We described the most important swtiches and uses of this command, but there are more.</p>