Here is a quick example of how to compress and extract a tar files in linux operating system.
We can see what are the available options we have got of tar command by doing:
man tar
or
tar --help
We normally use the following 5 commonly used options. These are c, z, f, v, x
- c = create a new tar file
- v = verbose, display file to compress or uncompress
- f = create the tar file with filename provided as the argument
- z = use gzip to zip it
- x = extract file
1. Create & Compress
Create and compress it with command tar tool. Syntax of the tar command is:
tar -cvzf new_tarname.tar.gz folder-you-want-to-compress
In the following example, we compress (gunzip) a folder named forum into a new tar file my_forum_files.tar.gz.
$ tar -cvzf my_forum_files.tar.gz forum
2. Extract or Uncompress
To UnCompress it, use command -x option with tar command.
In the following example, we are uncompressing:
$ tar -xvzf my_forum_files.tar.gz
Conclusion
With the tar command line interface we can compress and uncompress large files easily using c, v, f, z, x options.
