Simple command line app for the specific creation and handling of Gzip archives.

• Create gzip archives for each of a list of files, adding a file system safe ISO-8601 datatime value to the filename when creating the archive.
  • The format is either YYYY-MM-DD_HHmmss_TZ or YYYY-MM-DD_HHmmss.
  • The default is YYYY-MM-DD_HHmmss but in v1.1+ you can use YYYY-MM-DD_HHmmss_TZ by specifying an environment variable GZIPDATE=TIMEZONE or GZIPDATE=TZ, or using the option -t, -tz, -timezone, or --timezone for a single execution.
  • The default datetime is based on the current system time. But you can specify to use the modification time of the file with the options -f, -file, -file-date, or --file-date
• Extract the archived file from Gzip archives restoring their original names if available. The original name is always available for archives created by GzipDate.
• Does not delete source files by default. Though they can be automatically deleted with a command line switch.
• Always uses maximum compression when creating archives
• 100% compatible with gzip and gunzip tools
• Written in Go so it's easy to cross-compile binaries for many platforms

runeimp$ gzipdate -h
GzipDate v1.1.0

USAGE: gzipdate [OPTIONS] [FILENAMES]

OPTIONS:
  -d | -del  | --delete     Delete the source file after processing
  -f | -file | --file-date  Use the files modification time for the date
                            instead of the current time
  -h | -help | --help       Display this help info
  -t | -tz   | --timezone   Turn the timezone feature on
  -v | -ver  | --version    Display this apps version number
  --                        Disable option parsing and consider all following
                            arguments as file names only


Options are not position dependent and may be interspersed with file names.
POSIX options in the first column can be grouped together with the exception
of -h and -v which must be independent. Long options in the third column can
use a Multics style single hyphen prefix or the Gnu style double hyphen prefix
as displayed.

runeimp$ ls -hl
total 112
-rw-r--r--  1 runeimp  staff    54K Apr 16 10:33 Saved game.broguesave

runeimp$ gzipdate -dt *
Saving 21400 bytes from "Saved game.broguesave" to "Saved game.broguesave_2020-04-16_104846_PST.gz"
    Deleting source: "Saved game.broguesave"

runeimp$ ls -hl
total 48
-rw-r--r--  1 runeimp  staff    21K Apr 16 10:48 Saved game.broguesave_2020-04-16_104846_PST.gz

runeimp$ gzipdate *.gz
54984 B written to "Saved game.broguesave"

runeimp$ ls -hl
total 160
-rw-r--r--  1 runeimp  staff    54K Apr 16 10:33 Saved game.broguesave
-rw-r--r--  1 runeimp  staff    21K Apr 16 10:48 Saved game.broguesave_2020-04-16_104846_PST.gz

Note that the size and date of "Saved game.broguesave" is the same in the original as in the version restored from the archive.

Side Note: I added an extra line before each successive command in the second example for better readability.

I like making archives with the date in the name. Especially for game saves that get auto deleted like in Roguelike type games. It's also super annoying to me that gunzip doesn't use the stored filename within the archive by default. I also like my compression tools to be smart about if a file is already compressed or not. Gzip will give an error if you try to recompress a file that already ends in .gz. GzipDate just uncompresses the file instead. So just one command to use in either case.

See the installation docs