tar utility - how to zip and unzip files in linux

Colleagues hello to all.

In today's article, we will talk about a utility called tar in Linux. The tar utility means a tape archive which is used to copy files and directories and compresses everything into a single archive file commonly referred to as tar, gzip and bzip. On Linux, the tar utility is most widely used for creating compressed archive files.

Sitaxis:

tar [options] [archive-file-name] [file or directory to archive]

Parameters:

• -c : create archive
• -x : Extract archive
• -f : create archive with given filename
• -t : show or list files in a zipped file
• -u : archives and appends to an existing archive file
• -v : display detailed information
• -A : concatenate archive files
• -z : create tar file using gzip compression
• -W : check archive file

In the first example, we will create a tar archive named archive.tar.gz and put five sql files into this archive.

$. tar -czvf archive.tar.gz  file_1.sql file_2.sql file_3.sql file_4.sql file_5.sql

This should create a archive.tar.gz file.

In the following example, we will create an archive using the bzip2 compression algorithm, for this we need to use the -j parameter.

$. tar -cjvf archive.tar.bz2 file_1.sql file_2.sql file_3.sql file_4.sql file_5.sql

This should create a archive.tar.bz2 file.

In order for us to now unzip our archives, we need to use the same command, but with an additional -x parameter.

Unzipping a .tar.gz archive

$. tar -xvf archive_gz.tar.gz

Unzip archive .tar.bz2

$. tar -xvf archive_bz.tar.bz2

With the next two examples, we only want to see what we have in the archives without unpacking them, for this we need to use the -t parameter.

Show the contents of a .tar.gz archive

$. tar -tvf archive_gz.tar.gz

Show contents of .tar.bz2 archive

$. tar -tvf archive_bz.tar.bz2

Thank you all, I hope that my article helped you in some way.