GNU/Linux Tar Command Cheat Sheet

Archive Only (no compress)

• -c for Create a tarball, archive, (c mode)
• -x for Extract a tarball (x mode)
• -v for Verbose
• -f for File, read or write to the file

Archive Example

tar -cvf code.tar ./code-directory
tar -xvf code.tar

I don’t really understand -f, what’s that? You can use tar without -f.

tar -cv ./code-directory > code.tar
tar -xv < code.tar

As far as I know, it is equivalent to the Example above.

Compress Only (no archive)

Before that, let me introduce you gzip, bzip2, and xz. (for compress only, no archive.)

Compress Example

gzip file01
gzip -d file01.gz
# (-d for Decompress)

You can’t use gzip/bzip2/xz compress a folder, it only works with a file. In this case, you would create a tarball first, then gzip/bzip2/xz it.

Create Tarball with Compress (archive & compress)

tar -cvzf code.tar.gz ./code-directory
tar -xvf code.tar.gz

• -z for gzip
• -j for bzip2
• -J for xz

A complicated Example:

# prepare some files
for i in {1..5}; do echo $i > file$i; done
# tar first, then compress
tar -cvf files.tar file{1..5}; gzip files.tar
# is equivalent to
tar -cvzf files.tar.gz file{1..5}
# decompress & unpack (autodetect gzip/bzip2/xz)
tar -xvf files.tar.gz
cat file{1..5}