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 need z or J or whatever.
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 needz
orJ
or whatever.It can be easier if you’re used to the dash before the arguments; it’s optional but you can put them: