Unix: Visual QuickStart Guide

Archiving with tar

Occasionally, you'll want to take a bunch of files and make them into one file, when you're archiving information, for example. You might think of it as tossing a bunch of toys into a toy box—that is, taking a bunch of related things and storing them all in one place.

Using tar (which came from tape archive), you can take a bunch of files and store them as a single, uncompressed file (see Code Listing 13.5). You'll use tar files not only to store information, but also to create a single source for compressing and gzipping files, which are discussed later in this chapter.

Code Listing 13.5. Tarring files binds them all together into a single file.

[ejr@hobbes compression]$ ls -l total 2290 drwxrwxr-x 2 ejr users 1024 Jul 23 ...