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Tar commands¤

Extract¤

tar -xf archive.tar.gz

Compress¤

tar -czf archive.tar.gz file1 file2

Tar Command Syntax¤

tar [OPERATION_AND_OPTIONS] [ARCHIVE_NAME] [FILE_NAME(s)]

OPERATION

Only one operation argument is allowed and required. The most frequently used operations are:

  • --create (-c)- Create a new tar archive.
  • --extract (-x) - Extract the entire archive or one or more files from an archive.
  • --list (-t) - Display a list of the files included in the archive

OPTIONS

The most frequently used operations are:

  • --verbose (-v) - Show the files being processed by the tar command.
  • --file=archive=name (-f archive-name) - Specifies the archive file name.

ARCHIVE_NAME

The name of the archive.

FILE_NAME(s)

A space-separated list of filenames to be extracted from the archive. If not provided, the entire archive is extracted.

Examples¤

Create tar¤

tar -cf archive.tar file1 file2 file3

tar --create --file=archive.tar file1 file2 file3

tar -cf backup.tar /home/user

# tar.gz
tar -czf archive.tar.gz file1 file2

# tar.bz2
tar -cjf archive.tar.bz2 file1 file2

List tar¤

tar -tf archive.tar

# output
file1   
file2
file3

tar -tvf archive.tar

# output
-rw-r--r-- linuxize/users       0 2018-09-08 01:19 file1
-rw-r--r-- linuxize/users       0 2018-09-08 01:19 file2
-rw-r--r-- linuxize/users       0 2018-09-08 01:19 file3

Extract Tar¤

tar -xf archive.tar

tar -xvf archive.tar

tar -xf archive.tar -C /opt/files

tar -xf archive.tar.gz

tar -xf archive.tar.bz2

# extract specific files
tar -xf archive.tar file1 file2

# extract some other files
tar -xf archive.tar --wildcards '*.js'

# append new file
tar -rvf archive.tar newfile

# remove files
tar --delete -f archive.tar file1
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