Pax is an archiving utility that reads and writes tar and cpio formats, both the traditional ones and the extended formats specified in IEEE 1003.1. It handles multi-volume archives and automatically determines the format of an archive while reading it. The pax interface was designed by IEEE 1003.2 as a compromise in the chronic controversy over which of tar or cpio is best. . This is the free OpenBSD's version written by Keith Muller.