Extract tar files in Linux

[Jinendra]

I am trying to learn Linux Operating System and after a short research i came to know Ubuntu is the easiest to learn. I so installed Ubuntu 9.04. Well i came to know about "tar" files. What i know is, It is a type of Archive File. Can anyone help me about this archive and softwares that can extract this type of archive on Ubuntu Linux. Thanks!

[Lillebror]

The program tar, originally stands for tape archive, is useful for archiving files. It is a program and not just a command. It is included with all the Linux Distributions. It is the native program which is a command line interface. You can use the single command "tar" to create archive, view its content and also to extract the files from tar archive.

[Jinendra]

Thanks for the description. But can you provide me with some help to use the tar progarm/command? Would be really helpful. Does this program runs with all linux distributions similarly or there are changes for different linux distributions? Thanks!

[Calvin K]

Note : A ".tar" file is not a compressed files, it is just a collection of files within a single file. If the file is a ".tar.gz" or ".tgz" then its a collection of many files in a single file which is compressed. The file ".tgz" or ".tar.gz" represents a tarball file.

Creating a tar file :

tar -cvzf file1.tar file2.txt

c : to create archive
v : verbose mode output
z : compress file
f : specify file or file group

You can use wild card characters to tar a group of files by *.[file extension]

Example :

tar -cvzf file1.tar *.txt *.doc

The above command will create (c) verbose mode (v) tar archive and compress (z) files specified (f) in the command. All the .txt and .doc files will be archived.

Extracting the files from a tar file :

To extract an uncompressed tar file :

tar -xvvf file1.tar

This will Extract the files in tar files in the current location.

To extract a compressed tarball file :

tar -xvvzf myfile.tar.gz