Tar (tarball) compress and extract files in Unix or Linux

Are you, like the rest of the world, figuring out how to unwrap whatever is inside a .tar.gz file?
Or have you learned the command for tar.gz but now you have a .tar.bz2 file?

Or have you stumbled over .tgz, .tbz or .tbz2?

Alright, I will give you a very short list of commands that I find is the most useful

First, short explanation of relevant flags:

• c = create
• v = verbose (list files in archive when operate, can be ommited)
• f = archive
• x = extract
• z = gzip
• j = bzip2

Tar

Extract

Univarsal extract method

If you remember this you'll get a long way
It turns out tar figures it out if you dont specify z or j flag on extract

tar xvf myfile.tar.gz
tar xvf myfile.tar.bz2

extract gzip archive

tar xvzf myfile.tar.gz

extract bzip2 archive

tar xvjf myfile.tar.gz

Create compressed tar archives

Gzip - .tar.gz/.tgz file

# folder
tar cvzf myfolder.tar.gz ./myfolder
# file
tar cvzf myfile.tar.gz myfile.txt
# many files
tar cvzf myfiles.tar.gz myfile myfile2
# wildcard
tar cvzf my.tar.gz my*

Bzip2 - .tar.bz2/.tbz/.tar.tb2 files

Same tricks of including files in archive as for gzip

tar cvfj myfolder.tar.bz2 ./myfolder