How to extract Zstandard (.zst) Archives with tar July 17, 2025

Zstandard (.zst) is a modern, high-performance compression format increasingly used as an alternative to traditional formats like .zip and .gz. You can extract .zst archives easily using the tar command.

Let us follow the guide:

1. Extract with Modern tar:
   Most modern versions of tar support “.zst” compression natively. To extract a .zst archive:

   tar -xf archive.zst

2. Extract with Older tar (Using –use-compress-program)
   If your version of tar does not support Zstandard natively, you can specify the decompression program:

   tar --use-compress-program=zstd -xf archive.zst

3. Errors with Very Old tar Versions:
   On older systems, you may encounter an error like:

   zstd: error 25 : Write error : Broken pipe (cannot write compressed block)
   tar: Error opening archive: Child process exited with status 25

   This indicates that tar cannot handle the Zstandard stream correctly. In such cases, use a two-step extraction method.

4. Two-Step Extraction Method:
   1. Decompress the .zst file:

      zstd -d myfile.zst

      This creates a decompressed myfile (typically a .tar file).

   2. Extract the resulting tar archive:

      tar -xf myfile

Additional Notes

• Some third-party tools like MATLAB may also support .zst files natively.
• Ensure Zstandard (zstd) is installed on your system for compatibility with older tar versions.

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Need to compress files too? Learn How to Zip Files using command prompt