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cli-tarHow can I use a single command to tar and gzip a file?


The command tar -czf <name_of_archive>.tar.gz <name_of_file_or_directory> can be used to tar and gzip a file or directory. This command will create a tarball (a single file) containing the file or directory and its contents.

For example, the following command will create an archive called example.tar.gz containing the file example.txt:

tar -czf example.tar.gz example.txt

The command will produce no output.

The parts of the command are as follows:

  • tar: The tar command is used to create, modify, and extract files from archives.
  • -czf: These are flags that tell tar to create an archive (-c), compress it using gzip (-z), and use the specified file name for the archive (-f).
  • example.tar.gz: This is the name of the archive that will be created.
  • example.txt: This is the name of the file or directory that will be compressed and added to the archive.

For more information, see the tar man page or this tutorial.

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