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Archive and Compression

There are several options for archiving and compressing groups of files or directories. The most commonly used options are:

tar

See the official documentation for tar for more information.

Saves many files together into a single archive file, and restores individual files from the archive. Includes automatic archive compression/decompression options and special features for incremental and full backups.

Examples:

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  (list contents of archive somefile.tar)
$ tar tvf somefile.tar

  (extract contents of somefile.tar)
$ tar xvf somefile.tar

  (extract contents of gzipped archive somefile.tar.gz)
$ tar xzvf somefile.tar.gz

  (extract contents of bzip2 archive somefile.tar.bz2)
$ tar xjvf somefile.tar.bz2

  (archive all ".c" files in current directory into one archive file)
$ tar cvf somefile.tar *.c

  (archive and gzip-compress all files in a directory into one archive file)
$ tar czvf somefile.tar.gz somedirectory/

  (archive and bzip2-compress all files in a directory into one archive file)
$ tar cjvf somefile.tar.bz2 somedirectory/

Other arguments for tar can be explored by using the man tar command.

gzip

See the official documentation for gzip for more information.

The standard compression system for all GNU software.

Examples:

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  (compress file somefile - also removes uncompressed file)
$ gzip somefile

  (uncompress file somefile.gz - also removes compressed file)
$ gunzip somefile.gz

bzip2

See the official documentation for bzip for more information.

Strong, lossless data compressor based on the Burrows-Wheeler transform. Stronger compression than gzip.

Examples:

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  (compress file somefile - also removes uncompressed file)
$ bzip2 somefile

  (uncompress file somefile.bz2 - also removes compressed file)
$ bunzip2 somefile.bz2

There are several other, less commonly used, options available as well:

  • zip
  • 7zip
  • xz