Skip to content

Archive Commands

💾 TAR

Flags

  • -c = create
  • -x = extract
  • -z = gzip
  • -v = verbose
  • -f = filename
  • -C = extract into directory

💾 Create a .tar archive

tar -cvf archive.tar <file_or_directory>

💾 Extract a .tar archive

tar -xvf archive.tar -C </target_directory>

💾 TAR .tar file preview

tar -tvf archive.tar

🗜️ Create a TAR + GZIP .tar.gz archive

tar -czvf archive.tar.gz <file_or_directory>

🗜️ Extract a TAR + GZIP .tar.gz archive

tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz -C </target_directory>

🗜️ TAR + GZIP .tar.gz file preview

tar -tzvf archive.tar.gz

📃 GZIP ⚠️ only single files ⚠️

Flags

  • -k = keep file
  • -c = Write compressed or decompressed data to stdout
  • > = Redirect that output into a new file

📄 Archive (Compress) to .gz file with GZIP

gzip -k archive.txt

💡 or (same result using output redirection):

gzip -c archive.txt > archive.txt.gz

✅ Also keeps the original file.

📄 Extract (Decompress) a .gz file with GZIP

gunzip -k archive.txt.gz

💡 or (same result using output redirection):

gunzip -c archive.txt.gz > archive.txt

✅ Also keeps the original file.

🔗 ✄┈┈┈┈ ZIP

Flags

  • -r = Recursively include directories and files

🔗 Create a .zip archive

zip -r archive.zip <file_or_directory>

🔗 Extract (Unzip) a .zip archive

unzip archive.zip -d </target_directory>

🔗 Zip file preview

unzip -l archive.zip

🔍 Validate file info

file archive.zip
file archive.tar.gz
file archive.tar
file archive.gz