The TAR Command

What is the TAR Command?

The tar command is used to bundle multiple files and/or directories into a single TAR archive, similar to creating ZIP files.

Using the TAR Command

To use the tar command to create an archive, the following command can be ran

console

tar -cf <archive_name>.tar <file1> <file2> <dir1> <dir2> <etc>

The -cf flag combines the -c flag for creating an archieve and the -f flag for specifying a name for the archive file.

Removing Files From a TAR Archive

To files and directories from a TAR archive, the following command can be ran

console

tar --delete --file=<archive_name>.tar path/to/file1 path/to/dir1 path/to/etc

Note that this will not work on compressed TAR archives

Adding Files to a TAR Archive

To add files and directories to an existing TAR archive, the following command can be ran

console

tar --append --file=<archive_name>.tar <file1> <dir1> <etc>

Again, note that this will not work on compressed TAR archives

Preserving Permissions

To preserve permissions when making a TAR archive, attach the -p flag when extracting a TAR archive. This would look something like the following command

console

tar -xfp <archive_name>.tar

Listing TAR Archive Contents

To list the contents of a TAR archive, the following command can be ran

console

tar -tf <archive_name>.tar

The -tf flag combines the -t flag to list the archive's contents and the -f flag to specify a TAR archive file.

Example

I did this through Git Bash on Windows rather than Bash on my Ubuntu instance running on WSL because I didn't realize that Bash and Git Bash were the same thing, and I don't feel like creating dummy files for my Ubuntu instance.

I ran the following command in Bash to create a TAR archive of the files that make this very site

Console

tar -cf test.tar ./docs .gitignore mkdocs.yml README.txt requirements.txt

I created a dummy text file called dummy_file.txt and then add it to the archive by running the following command

Console

tar --append --file=test.tar dummy_file.txt

Then, to remove the .gitignore, I ran the following command

Console

tar --delete --file=test.tar .gitignore

Finally, to list the contents of the archive, I ran the following command

Console

tar -tf test.tar

The output at the end makes perfect sense because I added the dummy_file.txt and removed the .gitignore