cli-tarHow can I view the contents of a Unix tar file?

To view the contents of a Unix tar file, you can use the tar command with the tvf option. This command will list the contents of the tar file without extracting it. The general syntax is as follows:

tar tvf <filename>.tar

The output of the command will be a list of the contents of the tar file, including the file name, permissions, owner, size, and timestamp.

The following example code shows the output of the command for a tar file named example.tar:

$ tar tvf example.tar
-rw-r--r-- me/users   0 2019-10-20 15:20 file1.txt
-rw-r--r-- me/users   0 2019-10-20 15:20 file2.txt
-rw-r--r-- me/users   0 2019-10-20 15:20 file3.txt

The parts of the command are as follows:

• tar: The tar command is used to create, modify, and extract files from a tar archive.
• tvf: This option is used to view the contents of a tar file.
• <filename>.tar: This is the name of the tar file.

Helpful links

• tar command
• tar command examples

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