How to extract .war files in java? ZIP vs JAR

WAR file is just a JAR file, to extract it, just issue following jar command –

jar -xvf yourWARfileName.war

If the jar command is not found, which sometimes happens in the Windows command prompt, then specify full path i.e. in my case it is,

 c:\java\jdk-1.7.0\bin\jar -xvf my-file.war