Linux Shell Scripting Cookbook - Third Edition

stdin and stdout with tar

While archiving, we can specify stdout as the output file so another command in a pipe can read it as stdin and process the archive.

This technique will transfer data through a Secure Shell (SSH) connection, for example:

    $ tar cvf - files/ | ssh [e-mail] "tar xv -C Documents/"

In the preceding example, the files/directory is added to a tar archive which is output to stdout (denoted by -) and extracted to the Documents folder on the remote system.