Unix: Visual QuickStart Guide

Unarchiving files with tar

You'll also use tar to unarchive files, where you take all of the individual files out of the single tarred file—like dumping the bunch of toys out of the toy box—as shown in Code Listing 13.6.

Code Listing 13.6. Untarring files reconstructs the original directory structure.

[ejr@hobbes compression]$ tar -xf labrea.tar [ejr@hobbes compression]$ ls -l Labrea/ total 483 -rw-r--r-- 1 ejr users 53678 Jul 27 10:05 bigfile.gz -rw-r--r-- 1 ejr users 128886 Jul 27 10:06 mammoth.jpg -rw-r--r-- 1 ejr users 177607 Jul 27 10:05 house.uue -rw-r--r-- 1 ejr users 128886 Jul 27 10:06 rowboat.jpg [ejr@hobbes compression]$

To unarchive files with tar:

• tar -xf labrea.tar

  At the shell prompt, type tar -xf (here, x means extract), followed ...