You need to create or unpack archives in common formats (e.g., .tar, .tgz, or .zip).
The shutil module has two functions—make_archive() and unpack_archive()—thatdo exactly what you want. For example:
>>> import shutil
>>> shutil.unpack_archive('Python-3.3.0.tgz')
>>> shutil.make_archive('py33','zip','Python-3.3.0')
'/Users/beazley/Downloads/py33.zip'
>>>The second argument to make_archive() is the desired output format. To get a list ofsupported archive formats, use get_archive_formats(). For example:
>>> shutil.get_archive_formats()
[('bztar', "bzip2'ed tar-file"), ('gztar', "gzip'ed tar-file"),
('tar', 'uncompressed tar file'), ('zip', 'ZIP file')]
>>>Python has other library modules for dealing with the low-level details of various archiveformats (e.g., tarfile, zipfile, gzip, bz2, etc.). However, if all you’re trying to do ismake or extract an archive, there’s really no need to go so low level. You can just usethese high-level functions in shutil instead.The functions have a variety of additional options for logging, dryruns, file permissions,and so forth. Consult the shutil library documentation for further details.