tar Command Examples

Archiving utility. Often combined with a compression method, such as gzip or bzip2. More information: https://www.gnu.org/software/tar.

• [c]reate an archive and write it to a [f]ile:

tar cf {{path/to/target.tar}} {{path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...}}

• [c]reate a g[z]ipped archive and write it to a [f]ile:

tar czf {{path/to/target.tar.gz}} {{path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...}}

• [c]reate a g[z]ipped (compressed) archive from a directory using relative paths:

tar czf {{path/to/target.tar.gz}} --directory={{path/to/directory}} .

• E[x]tract a (compressed) archive [f]ile into the current directory [v]erbosely:

tar xvf {{path/to/source.tar[.gz|.bz2|.xz]}}

• E[x]tract a (compressed) archive [f]ile into the target directory:

tar xf {{path/to/source.tar[.gz|.bz2|.xz]}} --directory={{path/to/directory}}

• [c]reate a compressed archive and write it to a [f]ile, using the file extension to [a]utomatically determine the compression program:

tar caf {{path/to/target.tar.xz}} {{path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...}}

• Lis[t] the contents of a tar [f]ile [v]erbosely:

tar tvf {{path/to/source.tar}}

• E[x]tract files matching a pattern from an archive [f]ile:

tar xf {{path/to/source.tar}} --wildcards "{{*.html}}"