>>24
Tar zxf is convenient compared to cpio, the true UNIX archiver. While cpio -i extracts the files from an archive like you would expect, cpio -o is very different from most other archive programs, expecting to read a list of files from standard input. Replicating the behavior of '7z a archive directory' requires something like 'find directory | cpio -o (| gzip > archive)'.

Too bad cpio hasn't been standardized since System V Release 4 or i would send it more often to people.