atool is a script for managing file archives of various types (tar, tar+gzip, zip, etc).

The main command is probably 'aunpack' which extracts files from an archive. It overcomes the dreaded "multiple files in archive root" problem by first extracting to a unique subdirectory, and then moving back the files if possible.

aunpack also prevents local files from being overwritten by mistake. Other commands provided are apack (for creating archives), als (for listing files in archives), and acat (for extracting files to stdout).