Lesson 3.8: Compressing and archiving files

The difference between an archive and compression: tar to pack (c), list (t) and extract (x) many files as one, gzip/gunzip/zcat to compress, and the .tar.gz files you'll meet everywhere.

15 min

You will learn to

Explain archiving vs compressing
Create, list and extract archives with tar -c, -t, -x
Combine them with -z for .tar.gz
Compress and read single files with gzip and zcat

Key terms

Archive: One file that contains many files and directories together with their names, paths and permissions.
Compression: Re-encoding data so it takes fewer bytes, without losing anything (lossless).
tar: The standard archiving tool: c create, t list, x extract, f archive file, v verbose, z gzip, -C change directory first.
.tar.gz (.tgz): An archive that was then compressed with gzip; the most common way to distribute and back up files on Linux.
gzip / gunzip / zcat: Compress a single file to FILE.gz, decompress it back, or print the decompressed content without changing the file.
Tarbomb: An archive that extracts hundreds of files straight into the current directory, or uses paths like ../ to write elsewhere. Listing first (tar -t) prevents surprises.

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