Tar usage / Tar Cheat Sheet

tarcheatsheet.md

Tar Usage / Cheat Sheet

Commands

Compress: tar -cv$f name-of-archive.tar.$$ /path/to/directory-or-file

Extract: tar -xv$f name-of-archive.tar.$$ /path/to/directory-or-file

• c: Create an archive;
• x: Extract from archive;
• v: Allow verbose output;
• f: Specify the filename of the archive. It must be the last option;
• $: placeholder for some of the compression utilities:
  • z for Gzip;
  • j for bzip2;
  • J for XZ.
• $$: placeholder for the file extension of some of the compression utilities:
  • gz for Gzip;
  • bz2 for bzip2;
  • xz for XZ.

Excluding a directory from compression

e.g.: tar -cv$f name-of-archive.tar.$$ /path/to/dir-or-file --exclude=/path/to/dir-or-file/pattern1 --exclude=/path/to/dir-or-file/pattern2

Exclude takes a patern, not necessarily file names or paths. So doing something like --exclude=*.png, for instance, would exclude all png-type files to be compressed.