Tested on Linux Mint 17 (Ubuntu 14.04 based)

The following are some useful TAR arguments with explanations:

Don’t execute these, see full complete commands in the next “real-life examples” section afterwards.

  • Extract (x parameter) while listing (v parameter) verbosely the files to the screen.

tar xv

  • Lists the files from the archive without extracting them.

tar tv

  • Create (c arg) a tar archive and list files verbosely.

tar cv

  • Provide the output filename (f argument) and create (c arg) a tar archive listing files verbosely (v arg).

tar xvf

  • Extract (x) from the archive file (f) and list files verbosely (v).

tar cvf

  • Extract a gzip (z arg) compressed tar archive.

tar xvfz

  • Create a bz2 (j arg) compressed tar archive.

tar cvfj

Real-life Examples

  • Create a tar archive (archive_name.tar) from the files in directory (directory_name)

tar cvf archive_name.tar directory_name/

  • Create a gzip compressed tar archive (compressed_archve_name.tar.gz) from the files in directory (directory_name)

tar cvfz compressed_archive_name.tar.gz directory_name

  • Create a bzip compressed tar archive (compressed_archve_name.tar.bz2) from the files in directory (directory_name)

tar cvfj compressed_archive_name.tar.bz2 directory_name

  • Extract a gzip compressed tar archive (compressed_archve_name.tar.gz)

tar xvfz compressed_archive_name.tar.gz directory_name

  • Extract a bzip2 compressed tar archive (compressed_archve_name.tar.bz2)

tar xvfj compressed_archive_name.tar.bz2 directory_name

GZIP Compression

  • Create a GZIP compressed file.

gzip file.tar

  • Extract from compressed file.

gunzip file.tar.gz

You can also use bzip2 to compress and uncompress similarly.



Leave your comments below (or comment directly here).

Thank you for your feedback.