Since others have covered the documentation I thought I would sugest you take a look at an excellent archiving program known as 7-Zip. It's freely available, released under the LPGL, and handles several file formats (Packing / unpacking: 7z, ZIP, GZIP, BZIP2 and TAR ; Unpacking only: RAR, CAB, ISO, ARJ, LZH, CHM, Z, CPIO, RPM, DEB and NSIS). I don't even know why people pay for WinZIP or WinRAR anymore (as far as I know 7-zip gets better compression than RAR).