cli-tarHow do I unpack a tar file using the terminal?

To unpack a tar file using the terminal, you can use the command tar -xvf <tarfile>. This command has the following parts:

• tar: the command to invoke the tar program
• -x: the flag to extract files from an archive
• -v: the flag to display progress and file names while extracting
• -f: the flag to specify the tar file
• <tarfile>: the path to the tar file

For example:

tar -xvf my_archive.tar
x file1.txt, 0 bytes, 0 tape blocks
x file2.txt, 0 bytes, 0 tape blocks
x directory1/file3.txt, 0 bytes, 0 tape blocks

The output above shows that three files have been extracted from the tar file.

Helpful links

• https://www.computerhope.com/unix/utar.htm
• https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/extract-files-tar-command-linux/

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