4 ways to use Linux tar Command

The tar command in Linux is used to bundle up multiple files and/or directories. It’s similar to the zip command. However, zip files are compressed by definition; tar files can be compressed, but don’t have to be.

How to Use tar command on Linux

The basic command for creating tar.gz files is as below:

$ tar -czvf archivename.tar.gz filename…

• -c is tells tar to create a new archive.
• -z is sets the compression method to gzip.
• -f archive-name.tar.gz specifies the name of archive.
• filename… represents a list of files and directories to be added into the archive with space-separated. (for example :- filename1 filename2 )

The basic command for extracting a tar.gz files is as below:

$ tar -xzvf archivename.tar.gz

Create a tar Archive

As an example, we create a Tar File named “example.tar.gz” with “filename1” and “filename2“

$ tar -czvf example.tar.gz filename1 filename2

The above command doesn’t show any output on success. So if we want verify that the archive is created or not, then list the directory contents with ls command.

If you wish to create the tar.gz inside a directory, then type full path to the archive file same as below:

$ tar -czvf /home/user/example.tar.gz filename1 filename2

Extract a tar Archive

The following command will extract the contents of archive.tar.gz to the current directory.

tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz

We may want to extract the contents of the archive to a specific directory. We can do this by appending the -C switch to the end of the command. For example, the following command will extract the contents of the archive.tar.gz file to the /home directory.

tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz -C /home

view the contents of a tar archive

we might need to view the contents of an archive without actually extracting it. we can do this with the -t flag.

tar -tvf logs_archive.tar.gz

In this command, -t flag specifies that we need to only view the contents of the archive. -f specifies the filename and -v displays the detailed contents.

search compressed log files in a tar archive

we might still need to access certain files once they’re archived. Luckily, there is a method we can use to search and view compressed log files without decompressing them and compromising disk space.

The command we can use to search in compressed files is zgrep:

We can search for a string in an archive using the below command:

 zgrep -Hna 'string-to-search' compressedFile.tar.gz

Let’s briefly look at the flags.

• -H lists the file name that contains the match.
• -n displays the line number that contains the matched string.
• -a treats all files as text files.