tar

Create an archive (with gzip compression).

tar -czf archive-name.tar.gz file-or-directory

Extract an archive.

tar -xzf archive-name.tar.gz

List archive contents (without extracting).

tar -tzf archive-name.tar.gz

Create an archive (with bzip2 compression).

tar -cjf archive-name.tar.bz2 file-or-directory

Extract to a specific directory.

tar -xzf archive-name.tar.gz -C destination-directory

Option	Description
-c	Creates an archive (create).
-x	Extracts an archive (extract).
-t	Lists the contents of an archive (list).
-z	Compresses or decompresses with gzip (.tar.gz / .tgz).
-j	Compresses or decompresses with bzip2 (.tar.bz2).
-J	Compresses or decompresses with xz (.tar.xz).
-f filename	Specifies the archive filename (required).
-v	Shows each file as it is processed (verbose).
-C directory	Specifies the directory to extract into.
--exclude=pattern	Excludes matching files from the archive.
-p	Preserves file permissions and ownership.
--strip-components=N	Strips the leading N path components when extracting.

The examples below use the following directory structure.

Create a gzip-compressed archive of the directory. Adding -v prints each file as it is processed.

tar -czvf project.tar.gz ~/project/
~/project/
~/project/src/
~/project/src/index.php
~/project/src/css/
~/project/src/css/style.css
~/project/docs/
~/project/docs/README.md

List the contents of an archive without extracting it.

tar -tzf project.tar.gz
~/project/
~/project/src/
~/project/src/index.php
~/project/src/css/
~/project/src/css/style.css
~/project/docs/
~/project/docs/README.md

Extract the archive into the current directory.

tar -xzf project.tar.gz

Extract the archive into a specific directory.

tar -xzf project.tar.gz -C /tmp/restore/

Create an archive while excluding .git and node_modules.

archive_clean.sh

tar -czf project-clean.tar.gz \
    --exclude='.git' \
    --exclude='node_modules' \
    ~/project/

bash archive_clean.sh

Create a date-stamped backup.

backup.sh

today=$(date +%Y%m%d)
tar -czf "backup_${today}.tar.gz" ~/project/

bash backup.sh

Create an archive with bzip2 compression (higher compression ratio than gzip, but slower).

tar -cjf project.tar.bz2 ~/project/

Check the compressed file size of the archive.

ls -lh project.tar.gz
-rw-r--r-- 1 user user 2.3M Mar  6 12:00 project.tar.gz

The most commonly used option combinations are -czf (Create + gZip + File) and -xzf (eXtract + gZip + File). Adding -v prints each file being processed so you can track progress.

In backup scripts, it is important to use --exclude to omit unnecessary directories such as .git and node_modules. For other commands that work with compressed files, see gzip / bzip2 / zip.