“Untar” a file
If you are working with example.tar file, you can extract the files from it using:
tar xvf example.tar
If you are working with gzipped(example.tar.gz), you can extract the files from it using:
tar xvfz example.tar.gz
If you have example.tgz, you can extract the files from it using:
tar xzvf example.tgz
If the tarball has been compressed with bzip2(example.tar.bz2), then you will need to
have bzip2 installed. (If all is well and bzip2 is installed, you can extract the files from it
using:
tar yxf example.tar.bz2
Sometimes you only want to extract certain directories from the tarball.
An example of doing so would be:
tar xvzf example.tar.gz */DIRECTORY_YOU_WANT_REPLACES_THIS_TEXT/*
If you would like to see what is inside a tarball, you can use the command:
tar tvf example.tar
If you would like to see what is inside a gzip’d tarball, you can use the command:
tar tzf example.tar.gz