How to compress and decompress rar files in Ubuntu

We usually associate RAR files with Windows, however more and more people use Ubuntu which makes it necessary to know how to compress and decompress RAR files in Ubuntu. 

In case you didn't know, RAR stands for Roshal Archive and is a proprietary format with a lossless compression algorithm. Although RAR is slower than ZIP, it has a higher compression rate and better data redundancy.

How to compress files into rar?

Due to licensing issues, an Ubuntu installation does not include packages for RAR files natively. 

Open a terminal and install a rar package:

sudo apt install rar

Here is a basic syntax to compress files:

rar [command] [ArchiveName] [file]

For example:

sudo rar a rartest file1.txt file2.txt

Sample output:

To add a password to your archive, just add -p option to the end of your command and you will be prompted to enter a password:

sudo rar a rartest file1.txt file2.txt -p

Decompress RAR files on Ubuntu

We have to install a package called unrar from the official Ubuntu repositories.

Run the following in your terminal:

sudo apt install unrar

Follow this syntax to decompress files in Ubuntu:

unrar x [rar-file]

Sample output:

If the file is password-protected, you will be prompted immediately.

Congratulations! You have learned how to compress and decompress files from a terminal in your Ubuntu Shell.