this post was submitted on 07 May 2025
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It is "backwards" from some other commands
usually you run copy/rsync/link from source to destination, but with tar the destination (tarball) is specified before the source (directory/files).
That, and the flags not needing dashes always just throws me for a loop.
And the icing on the cake is that I don't use tar for tarring that often, so I lose all muscle memory (untaring a tgz or tar.bz2 is frequent enough that I can usually get that right at least...).
I almost never create a tarball, so I have to look up the syntax for that. Which is as simple as
man tar. But as far as extracting it almost couldn't be easier,tar xf <tarball>and call it a day. Or if you want to list the contents without extracting,tar tf <tarball>. Unless you're using an ancient version of tar, it will detect and handle whatever compression format you're using without you having to remember if you needzorJor whatever.