In Linux and other Unix-based operating systems, a tarball (short for “tape archive”) is a single file that contains multiple other files and directories. The tar file format was originally used to store files on magnetic tape, but it is now commonly used to bundle a collection of files and directories together for easy transfer or backup.
The tar file format is a simple way of combining multiple files into a single archive file. Tar files are often compressed using a separate utility, such as gzip or bzip2, to reduce the overall size of the archive. Compressed tar files usually have the file extension “.tar.gz” or “.tar.bz2” depending on the compression method used.
The tar command is the standard command-line tool for creating, extracting and manipulating tar archives in Linux. The basic syntax for creating a tar archive is “tar -cvf archive.tar file1 file2 file3” where the ‘c’ flag tells tar to create a new archive, the ‘v’ flag tells it to be verbose, and the ‘f’ flag tells it to use the archive.tar file as the archive. To extract the files from a tar archive, the syntax is “tar -xvf archive.tar” where the ‘x’ flag tells tar to extract the files from the archive.
using the “tar” command in a shell script
#!/bin/bash
#Creates a tar archive of the specified directory
#Define the directory to archive
dir_to_archive="example_directory"
#Define the name of the archive file
archive_file="example_archive.tar.gz"
#Create the archive
tar -czvf $archive_file $dir_to_archive
This script creates a new tar archive called “example_archive.tar.gz” that contains the files and directories in the “example_directory” directory. The -c flag tells the tar command to create a new archive, the -z flag tells it to compress the archive using gzip, and the -v flag tells it to be verbose, i.e, it will display the progress of the archiving process.
To extract the files from a tar archive, you can use the following script:
#!/bin/bash
# Extracts the files from a tar archive
#Define the name of the archive file
archive_file="example_archive.tar.gz"
#Extract the files
tar -xzvf $archive_file
This script extracts the files and directories from the “example_archive.tar.gz” archive. The -x flag tells the tar command to extract the files, the -z flag tells it to decompress the archive using gzip, and the -v flag tells it to be verbose.
You can use these scripts as a base and customize it according to your needs.
