File Compression and Archiving Linux Commands - .tar, .tar.gz, .tgz

#DecodeITeS

What is tar command

We can combine a bunch of files and directories into a single file
The tar command is used to compress a group of files Or multiple files into an archive. The command is also used to extract, maintain, or modify the tar archives.
Tar archives combine multiple file(s) and/or directories together to a single file. Tar archives are not necessarily compressed but they can be.
Permissions are preserved on the process for archiving
It supports many compression formats
The algorithm used for compressing of .tar.gz and .tar.bz2 are gzip or bzip algorithms respectively.

Syntax: tar [options] [archive-file] [file or directory to be archived]

Options:
-c : Creates archive
-x : Extracts the archive
-f : creates archive with given filename
-t : displays or lists files in archived file
-u : archives and adds to an existing archive file
-v : Displays verbose information
-A : Concatenates the archive files
-z : compresses the tar file using gzip
-j : compresses the tar file using bzip2
-W : Verifies an archive file
-r : updates or adds file or directory in already existing .tar file

Examples:

Extract an archive
Create an archive with files or folder
Create compressed archives
Show all files of an archive
Create an uncompressed archive of all .txt files in the current directory
Extract files from gzip tar Archive archive.tar.gz
Create a compressed tar archive file using bzip2
Update an existing tar file by adding todo.txt file to archive
List contents of the tar file
Create a compressed archive of the current directory but excluding few directories