Ubuntu Unleashed 2013 Edition: Covering 12.10 and 13.04, Eighth Edition

Copying Files Using tar

One choice for copying files into another location is to use the tar command; you just create a tar file that is piped to tar to be uncompressed in the new location. To accomplish this, first change to the source directory. Then the entire command resembles this:

matthew@seymour:~$ tar -cvf files | (cd target_directory ; tar -xpf)

In this command, files are the filenames you want to include; use * to include the entire current directory.

Here is how this command works: You have already changed to the source directory and executed tar with the cvf arguments that tell tar to

• c—Create an archive.

• v—Verbose; lists the files processed so you can see that it is working.

• f—The filename of the archive will be what follows. ...