Create, Extract, See Contents
The tar program takes one of three funcion command line arguments
c --- to create a tar file, writing the file starts at the beginning.
t --- table of contents, see the names of all files or those specified in other command line arguments.
x --- extract (restore) the contents of the tar file
Compression, Verbose, File specified
In addition to a function command line argument the arguments below are useful. I usually use z and f all the time, and v when creating/extracting.
f --- specifies the filename (which follows the f) used to tar into or to tar out from; see the examples below.
z --- use zip/gzip to compress the tar file or to read from a compressed tar file.
v --- verbose output, show, e.g., during create or extract, the files being stored into or restored from the tar file
tar a directory
tar cvzf directory.tar.gz directoryname
untar a tar file
tar xvzf directory.tar.gz
tar cvzf directory.tar.gz directoryname
