title: What is the best library to work with archives
body: <p>I wonder, what library you would choose for the following:
  I need to be able to combine a bunch of files and folders (a tree of filesystem structure) into one file - archive, thus having one composite file.</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>the library must be cross-platform: Windows 7 and Linux</li>
  <li>it must provide access to the content and ability to extract only one file (e.g. if I have an archive of data folder and if I need only data/subdata/file, only it should be extracted)</li>
  <li>it must have C++ (preferably) or C API</li>
  <li>I am not particularly keen on archiving, but it would be desirable, since I will be storing mostly text files and they compress well...</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Any feedback is highly appreciated!</p>