Unix/Linux : How to open tar.gz file ?

It has been a while since I touched tar files( have been using Mac for long time) and couple of days back I need to open up a tar and gzipped file.

Need to do a tar -h to see how to open up the tar.gz archive

Without much ado, the command to open a tar.gz file looks like this :

tar -zxvf nicephotos.tar.gz -C /nicephotos

Basically the command above is to :

• -z Uncompress archive with gzip format

• -x Extract the files in the archive

• -v Verbose mode ( more information)

• -f Location of archive

• -C <target dir> Change to <target dir> before processing remaining files (output files to the target directory)

Just in case you want to view the archive content before uncompressing. You can use this command

tar -tzvf nicephotos.tar.gz

• -t will list only entries that match( display everything)

Hope this short tutorial is useful for you.