Reading through the Unix's man or manual for a command description may be a little pain but with repeated practice you get used to it. In this blog I mix the manual's content and add my own example which might be of frequent use in general.
SYNOPSIS
tar [-] A --catenate --concatenate |
c --create |
d --diff --compare |
--delete |
r --append |
t --list |
--test-label |
u --update |
x --extract
--get [options] [pathname ...]
DESCRIPTION
Tar stores and extracts files from a tape or disk archive. The first argument to tar should be a function; either one of the letters Acdrtux, or one of the long function names.
Some options take a parameter; with the single-letter form these must be given as separate arguments. With the long form, they may be given by appending = value to the option.
FUNCTION LETTERS
-A, --catenate, --concatenate
append tar files to an archive
-c, --create
create a new archive
-d, --diff, --compare
find differences between archive and file system
--delete
delete from the archive (not on mag tapes!)
-r, --append
append files to the end of an archive
-t, --list
list the contents of an archive
--test-label
test the archive volume label and exit
-u, --update
only append files newer than copy in archive
-x, --extract, --get
extract files from an archive
OTHER OPTIONS
-a, --auto-compress
use archive suffix to determine the compression program
--add-file=FILE
add given FILE to the archive (useful if its name starts with a dash)
--atime-preserve
preserve access times on dumped files, either by restoring the times
--no-auto-compress
do not use archive suffix to determine the compression program
-C, --directory DIR
change to directory DIR
--checkpoint
display progress messages every NUMBERth record (default 10)
--exclude-vcs
exclude version control system directories
-f, --file ARCHIVE
use archive file or device ARCHIVE
--force-local
archive file is local even if it has a colon
-h, --dereference
follow symlinks; archive and dump the files they point to
--hard-dereference
follow hard links; archive and dump the files they refer to
--ignore-case
ignore case
--no-ignore-case
case sensitive matching (default)
-k, --keep-old-files
don't replace existing files when extracting
--keep-newer-files
don't replace existing files that are newer than their archive copies
-X, --exclude-from FILE
exclude patterns listed in FILE
-z, --gzip, --gunzip --ungzip
filter the archive through gzip
-Z, --compress, --uncompress
filter the archive through compress
EXAMPLES
Create .tar archive from files foo and bar
$ tar -cf archive.tar foo bar
List all files in .tar archive verbosely
$ tar -tvf archive.tar
Extract all files from .tar archive
$ tar -xf archive.tar
Create zipped .tar archive from /home/karthik/myprojects
$ tar -zcvf myprojects.tar.gz /home/karthik/myprojects
Unzip and Restore an archive myprojects.tar.gz to say current directory
$ tar -zxvf myprojects.tar.gz
Unzip and Restore an archive myprojects.tar.gz to an existing directory say /temp
$ tar -zxvf myprojects.tar.gz /temp