How to use tar for archiving

If you are running a Linux Distribution, Mac OS X, or other Unix-like operating systems, your system will already have the tar program.

You can check the tar manual by typing ＄man tar in the terminal.

To unpack a tarball, use the following command:

＄ tar xvf <tarball>

In this command, the x stands for extract, v stands for verbose output, and f represents the filename of the archive.
To uncompress a gzip-compressed tar, use option z in addition to the command above.

＄ tar xvzf <tarball>

The z stands for uncompressing a gzip archive.
To uncompress a bzip2 compressed tar, use option j instead of z:

＄ tar xvjf <tarball>

To create a tar archive, use the command below:

＄ tar cvf <tarball name> <file/directory to be archived>

The c stands for create archive, v stands for the verbose list files that have been processed, and f represents the filename of the archive.
To create a compressed archive, use the following command:

＄ tar cvzf <tarball name> <file/directory to be archived>

This creates a gzip-compressed archive.
To create a bzip2 compressed archive, use option j:

＄ tar cvjf <tarball name> <file/directory to be archived>
To add a file or directory to an existing archive, use the following command:

＄ tar rvf <tarball name> <file/directory to be added>

You cannot add a file or directory to a compressed archive.

You can use the following command to view the tar content before extraction:

＄ tar tvf <tarball>

For a compressed archive, you can use the options j or z, depending on the type of compression.

To extract a single file from the archive, you can specify the name of the file at the end of the extract command:

tar xvf <tarball> <path to file>

If we specify a directory instead of a file, the directory will be extracted from the path.

We can also specify multiple files or directories for extraction.

Wildcards can also be used to extract files that match a specific pattern.

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