Unlike Windows’ convenient graphical user interface (GUI) for unzipping .zip files, you need to use the tar utility through the command line. However, there are also many third-party difference between an id and class in html tools you can install for a more user-friendly experience. Though gzip is the most common compression utility, it’s not the only one. As you might imagine, using a different compression utility on a .tar file will result in a different double extension. Some common examples include .tar.bz2 (bzip2), .tar.br (Brotli), and .tar.zst (zstd), among many others.
This command extracts (-x) the file (-f) specified (in this case, filename.tar.gz) to the current directory. Note that this command also works with other common compression formats such as .tar.bz2. Where most operating systems make it easy to extract and create .zip files, the same can’t really be said for .tar files — at least not in ways that are easy to notice.
Only extract specific files or directories from .tar.gz in Linux
Likewise, we don’t need the -j option to list the files in a tar.bz2 file. If we list the files in the Download directory we will see that another directory called Guitar Songs has been created. But with .zip being the easier of the two to use, why use .tar in the first place? The next section shows how .tar comes with a few extra features that make it the better compression format for certain files and applications. A user-friendly way to extract files from a .tar.gz archive is via a Graphical User Interface (GUI).
Xarchiver is a highly flexible graphical program that can unzip archives and portable package formats in Linux. plasma group to halt ethereum scalability research says it reached maturity You may want to extract the contents of the archive to a specific directory. You can do so by appending the -C switch to the end of the command. For example, the following command will extract the contents of the archive.tar.gz file to the /tmp directory.
Zip and unzip .tar and .tar.gz in Linux with gzip
Tarbombs are useful for patches and software installers; it’s just a matter of knowing when to use them and when to avoid them. To extract all the files from a directory within a tar file use the following command. Note that the path is wrapped in quotation marks because there are spaces in the path.
How to “Unzip” or Extract a Tar.gz File on Windows
- You’ll encounter them frequently while using a Linux distribution like Ubuntu or even while using the terminal on macOS.
- This error occurs if you try to decompress a file without specifying a decompression utility, specifically -z for gzip.
- The .gz extension represents the gzip compression format, which can be applied to almost any file format to compress data and save space.
- While there are many tools to choose from, the most popular include 7-Zip and WinZip.
Most Linux and BSD desktops come with a graphical archive utility. So far we’ve just taken a leap of faith and extracted the files sight unseen. You can review the contents of a tar file before you extract it by using the -t (list) option. It is usually convenient to pipe the output through the less command. List the files in the directory with ls and you’ll see that a directory has been created called Ukulele Songs. It was contained in the tar file, and was extracted along with the files.
Technical details aside, all you need to remember is that .zip files are more accessible but less space-efficient, while .tar files are less accessible but more space-efficient. As a result, one isn’t necessarily better than the other — it’s all a matter of application. From videos to entire software packages, many files are compressed and stored using the .tar.gz format. While extracting a .tar.gz file isn’t quite as easy as unzipping a .zip, it’s still pretty straightforward.
Unpack is a simple third-party Bash wrapper script that allows you to unzip almost any type of modern archive format in Linux. Unlike tar and Xarchiver, it aims to be what are nfts and should designers be thinking about crypto art a simple, single command solution to extract Tar.gz files. While the file manager in most distributions can work with tar.gz, there are cases where you need a more powerful tool to do the job.
