---
layout: page
category_title: interm
category-page: interm
tags: tar shell command compress archive
author: Nicola Brunner
title: tar
---

The <code>tar</code> command is used to create and manipulate streaming archive files, in
other words it is used to compress and extract files and directories. He can
extract from many file formats like: tar, pax, cpio, zio, jar, ar and ISO 9660
cdrom images and create tar, pax, cpio, ar, and shar archives.<br><br>

<h3>Usage:</h3>

There are different syntaxes for this command:

<pre>
tar {-c} [options] [files | directories]
</pre>

The first one is the default syntax. Where <code>{-c}</code> stays for the
creation of a new archive, <code>[options]</code> for the different flags that
we can use, <code>[files | directories]</code> for the files or directories
what we want to compress.

<pre>
tar {-r | -u} -f archive-file [options] [files | directories]
tar {-t | -x} [options] [patterns]
tar [bundled-flags args] [file | pattern ...]
</pre>

The last one shows a bundled option word provided for compatibility with
historical implementations.<br><br>

<h3>Flags:</h3>

This command has a large number of options, but you just need to remember a
few letters for the most important ones:

<ul>
    <li><code>-c</code> creates a new archive, that contains the specified items.</li>
    <li><code>-r</code> is like <code>-c</code> but appends the new entries to the
        archive, requires the <code>-f</code> option.
    </li>
    <li><code>-u</code> is like <code>-r</code> but adds the new entries only if
        the date is newer than the corresponding entry date of the file/directory to
        the archive, requires the <code>-f</code> option.
    </li>
    <li><code>-t</code> lists the archive contents to the terminal output.</li>
    <li><code>-v</code> is used to display the progress of an archive creation in
        the terminal.
    </li>
    <li><code>-f</code> allows to specify the name of an archive.</li>
    <li><code>-x</code> is used to extract files from an archive to the disk.</li>
    <li><code>--exclude</code> does not compress specified files or directories.</li>
    <li><code>--include</code> compresses specified file or directories. It's
        important to know that <code>--exclude</code> take precedence over inclusions.
        The <code>--include</code> option is useful when you want to filter archives.
    </li>
</ul>

If you don't find here an option that you search, or you are interested to read
more about this command, you can write in your terminal:

<pre>
man tar
</pre>

<h3>Examples</h3>

<pre>
tar -cvf archive.zip makesmaller.jpg
</pre>

In this case, we take the file <code>makesmaller.jpg</code> and compress it
to <code>archive.zip</code>. We use the options <code>-cvf</code>, <code>-c </code>
for creating a new archive, <code>-v</code> for displaying the progress of the
operation and <code>-f</code> for specifying the name of the archive.

<pre>
tar -cvf archive.zip makesmaller.jpg alsome.txt
</pre>
It's the same case as before, but we wanted to add also <code>alsome.txt</code>
to <code>archive.zip</code>.

<pre>
tar -cvf archive.tar /home/Documents --exclude=/home/Documents/PrivatePictures --exclude=/home/Documents/notme.txt
</pre>

With this command we can create an archive named <code>archive.tar</code> of
the <code>/home/Documents directory</code>, but we won't include the
<code>PrivatePictures</code> directory and the file <code>notme.txt</code>,
both are contained in <code>/home/Documents</code>.

<pre>
tar -cvf archive.tar /home/Music --exclude=*.mp4
</pre>

In this special case we exclude from the <code>archive.tar</code>all the
files which ends in .mp4 and are contained in the directory <code>/home/Music</code>.

<pre>
tar -cvf archive.zip /home/Music --include=*.mp3
</pre>

In this case we include only the files from the directory <code>/home/Music</code>
that ends in .mp3 to the <code>archive.zip</code>.

<pre>
tar -xvf archive.zip
</pre>
It's the same as the archive creation command we used above in the first
example, except the <code>-x</code> option replaces the <code>-c</code> option.
This specifies you want to extract an archive instead of creating one.