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cli-tarHow do I tar a directory using a terminal?


Using the terminal, you can tar (or compress) a directory and its contents in one step. To do this, you need to use the tar command.

For example, to tar the directory my_directory, you would use the following command:

tar -cvzf my_directory.tar.gz my_directory

This command will create a compressed archive called my_directory.tar.gz containing the contents of my_directory.

The parts of the command are:

  • tar: the command to create an archive
  • -cvzf: the flags used to specify the desired behavior of the command
    • -c: create an archive
    • -v: verbose - display the files being added to the archive
    • -z: compress the archive using gzip
    • -f: specify the filename of the archive
  • my_directory.tar.gz: the filename of the archive
  • my_directory: the directory to be archived

For more information, see the GNU tar manual.

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