cli-tarHow do I use the command line to tar and zip a file?

To tar and zip a file using the command line, use the tar command followed by the gzip command. This will create a .tar.gz file.

The syntax for this command is:

tar -cvzf <name_of_file>.tar.gz <name_of_file>

For example, to tar and zip a file called example.txt, the command would be:

tar -cvzf example.tar.gz example.txt

The output of this command should be:

example.txt

The parts of the command are as follows:

• tar: the command to create an archive
• -cvzf: the flags used to indicate the type of archive to create and the options to use
• <name_of_file>.tar.gz: the name of the archive file to create
• <name_of_file>: the name of the file to be archived

For more information on the tar command, see the following links:

• GNU tar Manual
• Linux tar Command Tutorial

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