cli-tarHow do I use the Unix tar xvf command?

The Unix tar xvf command is used to extract files from a tar archive. The x flag indicates that the files should be extracted, the v flag indicates that the process should be verbose, and the f flag indicates that the argument following the command should be treated as a file. The example below would extract the contents of myarchive.tar into the current working directory:

tar xvf myarchive.tar

The output of this command will be a list of all the files and folders that were extracted from the archive.

The parts of the command are as follows:

• tar: The command to extract files from an archive
• x: The flag to indicate that files should be extracted
• v: The flag to indicate that the process should be verbose
• f: The flag to indicate that the argument following the command is a file
• myarchive.tar: The file to be extracted

More information about the tar command can be found in the GNU tar manual.

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