tar

Pack files into an archive or unpack one

What it does

tar gathers files and folders into one archive. Flags are combined: -c creates, -x extracts, -t lists the contents, -z compresses or decompresses with gzip (hence .tar.gz), and -f names the archive. f goes last because the file name follows it.

An archive unpacks into the current folder; -C <folder> picks another. -v prints file names as it works. Modern tar detects compression when unpacking on its own, but -z does no harm.

Careful. Unpacking silently overwrites files with the same names. If you are not sure what is inside, look with tar -tzf first.

Syntax

tar -czf <archive>.tar.gz <what>…
tar -xzf <archive>.tar.gz
tar -xzf <archive>.tar.gz -C <folder>
tar -tzf <archive>.tar.gz

Examples

• Pack the folder site into the compressed archive backup.tar.gz

  tar -czf backup.tar.gz site

  same as: tar czf backup.tar.gz site, tar -zcf backup.tar.gz site

  • tar — the archiver
  • -c — create an archive
  • -z — compress with gzip
  • -f backup.tar.gz — the archive name; f comes last
  • site — what to pack

• Unpack backup.tar.gz into the current folder

  tar -xzf backup.tar.gz

  same as: tar xzf backup.tar.gz, tar -zxf backup.tar.gz, tar -xf backup.tar.gz, tar xf backup.tar.gz

  • tar — the archiver
  • -x — extract
  • -z — the archive is gzipped
  • -f backup.tar.gz — which archive

Related commands

• scp — Copy files between computers over SSH
• du — Find out how much space a folder takes
• df — See how much disk space there is

Practise · All commands