Macintosh Terminal Pocket Guide

Name

tar — stdin  stdout  - file  -- opt  --help  --version

Synopsis

tar [options] [files]

The tar program packs multiple files and directories into a single archive file for transport. Originally for backing up files onto a tape drive (its name is short for “tape archive”), tar is still a common file-packaging format. Using various options, you can create archive files, list their contents, and extract the files:

➜ tar -cvf myarchive.tar mydir      Create
➜ tar -tvf myarchive.tar            List contents
➜ tar -xvf myarchive.tar            Extract

It’s your responsibility to name the archive file properly; tar will not add a .tar suffix for you. TAR files are usually compressed with the other programs we covered in this section. Here are sample commands for archiving a directory mydir when compressed with gzip:

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

or compressed with bzip2:

➜ tar -cjvf myarchive.tar.bz2 mydir     Create archive
➜ tar -tjvf myarchive.tar.bz2           List contents
➜ tar -xjvf myarchive.tar.bz2           Extract

or compressed with compress:

➜ tar -cZvf myarchive.tar.Z mydir      Create archive
➜ tar -tZvf myarchive.tar.Z            List contents
➜ tar -xZvf myarchive.tar.Z            Extract

If you specify files on the command line, only those files are processed. To extract file1, file2, and file3 from a TAR file myarchive.tar, run:

➜ tar -xvf myarchive.tar file1 file2 file3

Otherwise, the entire archive is processed.

Useful options

-c	Create an archive. You’ll have ...