Linux Pocket Guide

Name

tar [options] [files] — tar

Synopsis

/bin stdin stdout - file -- opt --help --version

The tar (tape archive) program does more than read and write files to and from a tape drive:

$ tar -cf /dev/tape myfile1 myfile2

it also lets you create and extract from tar files, which are a standard means of packaging files on Linux and Unix systems:

$ tar -czvf myarchive.tar.gz mydir      Create
$ tar -tzvf myarchive.tar.gz            List contents
$ tar -xzvf myarchive.tar.gz            Extract

If you specify files on the command line, only those files are processed:

$ tar -xvf /dev/tape file1 file2 file3

Otherwise the entire archive is processed.

Useful options
-c	Create an archive. You’ll have to list the input files and directories on the command line.
-r	Append files to an existing archive.
-u	Append new/changed files to an existing archive.
-A	Append one archive (e.g., a tar file) to the end of another archive: e.g., tar -A -f /dev/tape myfile.tar.
-t	List the archive.
-x	Extract files from the archive.
-f file	Read the archive from, or write the archive to, the given file. This could be a device (such as /dev/tape) or a plain file if you want to create a traditional Linux tar file.
-d	Diff (compare) the archive against the filesystem.
-z	Compress (while writing) or uncompress (while reading) the data with gzip.
-j	Compress (while writing) or uncompress (while reading) the data with bzip2.
-Z	Compress (while writing) or uncompress (while reading) the data with Unix compress.
-b N	Use a block size of N * 512 bytes.
-v	Verbose mode: print extra ...