There is no program on unix (yet) that does the auto-detecting stuff you refer to. Most windows users however tend to fallback to the use of winzip (or any clone of that like power archiver). These programs are able to not only detect the archive they unpack, but also optionally zip in non-default archive formats like tgz (tar/gzip) or rar.
unzip is your best bet on HP-UX. it deals with ZIP files. See for the URL the previous posts or my site. The most versatile unzipper on unix is GNU's gzip, default installed on your HP-UX, but if it's an old version, not capable of dealing with files larger than 2 Gb.
The best compressing tool available is bzip2 (also available from my site), but it is still not often used on windows.
If you compress on HP-UX, using tar/gzip or zip, be sure to tell the folk on winblow$ to untick winzip's `smart' unpack option to convert unix new-line style to dos-ish line endings. It will ruin all binary files.
My HP ITRC site pages can be found at
Singapore
https://www.beepz.com/personal/merijn/Rotterdam
http://www.cmve.net/~merijn/Seattle
http://www.hpux.ws/merijn/Enjoy, have FUN! H.Merijn
Enjoy, Have FUN! H.Merijn
