pax Command Examples

Archiving and copying utility. More information: https://manned.org/pax.1p.

• List the contents of an archive:

pax -f {{archive.tar}}

• List the contents of a gzip archive:

pax -zf {{archive.tar.gz}}

• Create an archive from files:

pax -wf {{target.tar}} {{path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...}}

• Create an archive from files, using output redirection:

pax -w {{path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...}} > {{target.tar}}

• Extract an archive into the current directory:

pax -rf {{source.tar}}

• Copy to a directory, while keeping the original metadata; target/ must exist:

pax -rw {{path/to/file1}} {{path/to/directory1 path/to/directory2 ...}} {{target/}}