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Tarballs, gzips, bzip2s, and zips

$ tar

A file with the extension .tar is a tarball. A file with the extension .tar.gz (and less commonly .tgz) is a compressed tarball.

A tarball is one or more files bunched together to form a single file (an archive) with the tar utility. This uncompressed .tar file can then be compressed with gzip to form a .tar.gz (or .tgz) file.

Using tar is simple. Just remember: c to create or x to extract; and tag on vfz.

tar xvfz foo.tar.gz
Extract the contents of the foo.tar.gz file.

tar cvfz foo.tar.gz foo
Create a compressed (gzipped) tarball called foo.tar.gz, containing the directory foo.

tar cvfj foo.tar.bz2 foo
Create a compressed tarball using the superior (20% better compression), but slower bzip2 compression, rather than the more prevalent gzip compression.

tar xvfj foo.tar.bz2
Extract the contents of the foo.tar.bz2 file.

$ gzip

The gzip command compresses a single file. (Unlike tar cvfz that creates a separate archive and then compresses that archive.)

gzip report.pdf
Compress report.pdf as report.pdf.gz.

gzip -d report.pdf.gz
Decompress report.pdf.gz, so it becomes, report.pdf.

Note:

Alternatively to do the same thing, you can use: gunzip report.pdf.gz

$ bzip2

The bzip2 command compresses a single file. (Unlike tar cvfj that creates a separate archive and then compresses that archive.)

bzip2 report.pdf
Compress report.pdf as report.pdf.bz2.

bzip2 -d report.pdf.bz2
Decompress report.pdf.bz2, so it becomes, report.pdf.

Note:

Alternatively to do the same thing, you can use: bunzip2 report.pdf.bz2

$ zip

Zips (.zip) are a popular archiving and compression format used in Microsoft Windows.

zip reportbk report
Zip the file report as reportbk.zip.

zip -r myzip mydir
Zip the directory mydir as myzip.zip. -r (recursive) being required to zip directories.

$ unzip

unzip myzip
Unzip the file myzip.zip.

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