Had to extract multiple Debian packages recently (*.deb). The packages are compressed with "ar" a Unix utility that maintains groups of files as a single archive file. The ar command, like cpio, is less commonly used and even less friendly. To extract only the Debian package data, excluding metadata), run:
# for DEB in `ls *.deb`; do ar p $DEB data.tar.gz | tar -xzf - ; doneor use the Debian package utility...
# for DEB in `ls *.deb`; do dpkg-deb -x $DEB ./ ; done
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