`Tar`- An Ultimate Archive Utility

How to use tar

tar  [options] [name of tar file to be created] [list of files and directories to be included]

1. Creating an archive using tar
    
      $ tar -cvf target.tar file1 file2 dir1 
      $ tar -cvzf target.tar.gz dirname/             [ creates gzipped tar archive file ]
      $ tar -cvjf target.tar.bz2 dirname/           [ creates bzipped tar archive file ]

    Note: this -cvf options alone does not provide any compressions

2 Extracting an archive
 
      $ tar -xvf target.tar
      $ tar -xvzf target.tar.gz                            [ extracts gzipped tar archive file ]
      $ tar -xvjf target.tar.bz2                          [ extracts bzipped tar archive file ]

3. Listing an archive

      $ tar -tvf target.tar
      $ tar -tvzf target.tar.gz                             [ lists gzipped tar archive file ]
      $ tar -tvjf target.tar.bz2                           [ lists bzipped tar archive file ]

4. Extract a file/directory

    $ tar -xvf target.tar /mydir/myfile
    $ tar -xvzf target.tar.gz /mydir/myfile
    $ tar -xvjf target.tar.bz2 /mydir/myfile 

    if you want to extract a group of files from the archive use -wildcard option
    $ tar -xvf target.tar --wildcards '*.cc'
 
5. Adding a file or directory to an existing archive
 
    You can add additional files to an existing tar archive by specifying -u or -r options.
    use -u option if u do not want duplicates in the tar archived file. -r option will add the file to the existed archive if it exist also.

    $ tar -rvf target.tar newfile     or $ tar -uvf target.tar newfile

    Note: this can't be done for gz or bz2 archives.