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tar Command in Linux With Examples

how to unzip a tar file

Once you’ve done this successfully, you’ll notice that the icon for tar.gz files will change to a 7-Zip icon. Once you’ve selected the right file, you’ll see “7-Zip File Manager” show up in the select app dialog. If you want 7-Zip to always handle tar.gz files in the future, you’re going to want to select the “Always” button at the bottom of the dialog. To access the Windows command line, search for “command prompt” or “cmd” in the search bar. Right-click the first result and select the “Run as administrator” option.

Tar stands for “tape archive” and refers to a practice from the earlier days of computing when data how to buy arweave was backed up to tapes. Despite the nostalgic origin of the name, tar is very powerful and uses modern technologies to archive and compress files. After reading this article, you know how to use the tar command. However, there are various other options available that are not in this tutorial. Use the man command to find all the details about tar options.

Refresh the basics: Archive vs Compression

  1. The output shows no .txt files, only the files directory in the archive.
  2. You’ll want to replace “tarfile” with the path to the tar.gz file that you’re trying to extract.
  3. Just list as many directories or files as you want to back up.
  4. Note that this command will throw an error unless you specify the exact filename listed in the .tar file.
  5. To do so, just replace the -z for gzip in the commands here with a -j for bzip2.

Change the +1 parameter to +7 for weekly or +31 for monthly backups. To do this we’ll use almost exactly the same command as before but with one important difference. The .bz2 extension suffix tells us it how to become a successful java developer software development has been compressed using the bzip2 command.

Method 1: Extract TAR Files Using Command Prompt

how to unzip a tar file

This example uses example1.tar.gz in the Home directory. The output shows a newly created archive example1.tar.gz. No, Windows does not natively support TAR file extraction. You will need to use TAR file extractor tools such as 7-Zip or use a command-line tool like Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

The command creates directories named after each extracted file. For more information and the available Linux environment variables, visit the manual page. The verbose option displays additional information after running a tar command. Add -v or –verbose to any operation to see the result. To extract all the files from a directory within a tar file use the following command.

How to Extract or Unzip tar.gz Files Using Bash on Windows 10 or 11

The -p (parents) option causes mkdir to create any parent directories that are required, ensuring the target directory is created. Let’s say you’ve downloaded two files of sheet music. One file is called ukulele_songs.tar.gz , the other is called guitar_songs.tar.bz2 . Gzip is faster, but it generally compresses a bit less, so you get a somewhat larger file. Bzip2 is slower, but it compresses a bit more, so you get a somewhat smaller file.

What command do I need to unzip/extract a .tar.gz file?

The tar.gz compressed archives take the least time to extract when compared to other compression formats. Extracting from an archive or compressed archive uses the -x or –extract operation with tar. The additional options depend on the file type and where tar should extract the components. Since .tar.gz compresses multiple files all at once, it can take advantage of similarities between individual files to save on space. This error usually occurs when a .tar has been saved as a .gz despite having never been compressed using the gzip utility. With the command prompt open, use the appropriate commands to change the current working directory (cd) to the location of the .tar.gz file you want to unzip.

The command creates the directory files with only the indicated file. Follow the same steps to extract a single file from compressed archives by adding the appropriate tag. For example, use the -z option to pull from a tar.gz file. the differences between a real estate agent a broker and a realtor The .tar portion of the file extension stands for tape archive, and is the reason that both of these file types are called tar files. Tar files date all the way back to 1979 when the tar command was created to allow system administrators to archive files onto tape. Forty years later we are still using the tar command to extract tar files on to our hard drives.

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