cli-tarHow do tar gzip and zip differ in terms of file compression?

Tar, Gzip and Zip are three different methods of compressing files.

Tar is a file archiving utility that combines multiple files into a single file. It is not a compression utility, but it can be used in conjunction with a compression utility such as Gzip to compress the archived file.

Gzip is a compression utility that compresses a single file. It is usually used to compress text files, but can be used to compress any type of file.

Zip is a file archiving utility that combines multiple files into a single file and compresses them. It is more efficient than Tar and Gzip combined.

The following example shows how to use Tar, Gzip and Zip to compress a directory of files:

# Compress a directory of files using Tar, Gzip and Zip
tar -cvf directory.tar directory/
gzip directory.tar
zip -r directory.zip directory/

The example code will produce two files: directory.tar.gz and directory.zip. directory.tar.gz is a compressed Tar archive and directory.zip is a compressed Zip archive.

Code explanation

• tar -cvf directory.tar directory/: This command creates a Tar archive of the directory folder and saves it as directory.tar.
• gzip directory.tar: This command compresses the directory.tar file using Gzip.
• zip -r directory.zip directory/: This command creates a Zip archive of the directory folder and saves it as directory.zip.

• Helpful links

  • Tar Command
  • Gzip Command
  • Zip Command

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