TAR

The tar command creates and manipulates streaming archive files.

Create an uncompressed tar archive

tar cvf ARCHIVE.tar DIRECTORY

• c - Create a new archive
• v - Verbosely list files
• f - Follow archive file name

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Create a tar gzipped archive

tar cvfz ARCHIVE.tar.gz DIRECTORY

• z - Filter the archive through gzip

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Create a bzipped (bzip2) tar archive

tar cvfj ARCHIVE.tar.bz2 DIRECTORY

• j - Filter the archive through bzip2

N.B. bzip2 takes more time to compress and decompress than gzip but requires less space.

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Extract a .tar archive

tar xvf ARCHIVE.tar

• x - Extract files from archive

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Extract a gzipped | bzipped tar archive

tar xvfz ARCHIVE.tar.gz
tar xvfj ARCHIVE.tar.bz2

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List the contents of an archive

tar tvf ARCHIVE.tar
tar tvfz ARCHIVE.tar.gz
tar tvfj ARCHIVE.tar.bz2

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Extract a single file or directory

tar xvf ARCHIVE.tar <PATH>

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Append a file or directory to an existing archive

tar rvf ARCHIVE.tar <PATH>

• r - Append files to the end of an archive