Taring and Untaring .tar, .tar.bz, .tar.gz, etc... [Tutorial][Novice]

For those lacking time (or patience), the tl;dr (too long; didn't read) is at the bottom.

Tar -  The GNU version of the tar archiving utility

This is the command line application which we'll be learning today. It's a rather simple application, really, most tend to somehow mentally overcomplicate it. Remember that just using man [command] will usually yield the man(ual) page for a terminal command!

A "tar archive" itself is those little files that have extensions like .tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bzip, .tar.bzip2, and etc. How we handle each of them will change depending a bit on what our needs are.

 

 Alright, let's go right into our little black box, of course!

 Now inside the plg directory in myhome folder (short for playground), I've shown what's inside the current directory, as well as the farm directory

 

And here we go, we're actually creating a tar archieve! It's as simple as that. The switches can be broken up as: tar -c -f, but it's just easier to go tar -cf, as long as the tar archieve is right after the -f switch [Which specifies the archive of choice], there's no problem.

Want proof of what's inside? No problem, the -tf switches list everything! "But what about if we modify a file?" Do we have to 're-tar' all over again? No problem, -uf will only update the files in the archive that have been modified... Or created! When we add 'v' we can see everything that happens when it happens!

"But now how do we extract the tar?" Simple as that! tar -xvf the_tar_you_want.tar and it's done in record time!

 "What about .bz files?" What about them? To create them, just add a lowercase j anywhere in the primary switch! 

-jcf -jcvf -cjvf -cvjf... 

You get the idea!

 

 

 It's just intense how just adding a single letter changes everything and leaves it the same!

 Wow! Even .tar.gz files we can create! There's nothing to it with the -z switch added on!

And- You get the idea!

Hopefully, this tutorial was helpful enough for especially newbies to linux, as far as the tar command is concerned. I see a lot of these tutorials out there, but not many that actually use images of the prompt, step by step.

tl;dr

tar -cf creates regular .tar archive

tar -tf  lists what's inside the tar archive

tar -xf untars the regular .tar archive

tar -uf updates the tar archive with the newer versions of files, as well as adds new files that didn't exist before.

Adding j (in any order to -cf like -jcf, etc...) allows us to perform any of these things on .tar.bz files, z (same as j) allows these on .tar.gz, capital J (same as j and z)  allows it on .xz files.