Comments on: Create a TAR archive of a directory

By: dan

dan — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 14:36:04 +0000

Thanks for saving my time with this posting.

By: Guest

Guest — Wed, 04 May 2005 00:45:47 +0000

How to tar a folder which contains list subfolders in unix.Please get back to me immediately

By: qmchenry

qmchenry — Wed, 01 Dec 2004 14:39:25 +0000

Yeah, even with GNU tar, the hyphen is optional as indicated by the square brackets around the hyphen like [ - ] .. there are so many scripts and old timers like me around who user tar with the old hyphenless syntax that it would be miserable if it didn’t work anymore.

By: coredump

coredump — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 16:00:04 +0000

NAME
tar – The GNU version of the tar archiving utility

SYNOPSIS
tar [ - ] A –catenate –concatenate | c –create | d –diff –compare | r –append | t –list | u
–update | x -extract –get [ --atime-preserve ] [ -b, --block-size N ] [ -B, --read-full-blocks ] [ -C,
--directory DIR ] [ --checkpoint ] [ -f, --file [HOSTNAME:]F ] [ --force-local ] [ -F, --info-script
F --new-volume-script F ] [ -G, --incremental ] [ -g, --listed-incremental F ] [ -h, --dereference ] [
-i, --ignore-zeros ] [ -j, -I, --bzip ] [ --ignore-failed-read ] [ -k, --keep-old-files ] [ -K, --start-
ing-file F ] [ -l, --one-file-system ] [ -L, --tape-length N ] [ -m, --modification-time ] [ -M, --multi-
volume ] [ -N, --after-date DATE, --newer DATE ] [ -o, --old-archive, --portability ] [ -O, --to-stdout ]
[ -p, --same-permissions, --preserve-permissions ] [ -P, --absolute-paths ] [ --preserve ] [ -R,
--record-number ] [ --remove-files ] [ -s, --same-order, --preserve-order ] [ --same-owner ] [ -S,
--sparse ] [ -T, --files-from=F ] [ --null ] [ --totals ] [ -v, --verbose ] [ -V, --label NAME ] [
--version ] [ -w, --interactive, --confirmation ] [ -W, --verify ] [ --exclude FILE ] [ -X,
--exclude-from FILE ] [ -Z, --compress, --uncompress ] [ -z, --gzip, --ungzip ] [ --use-compress-
program PROG ] [ --block-compress ] [ -[0-7][lmh] ]

filename1 [ filename2, ... filenameN ]

directory1 [ directory2, ...directoryN ]

By: qmchenry

qmchenry — Wed, 14 Jan 2004 17:42:10 +0000

It may look funny without it, but the hyphen is optional. The traditional syntax for tar does not use the hyphen for command line options that we’ve become used to using. Likewise, the GNU double hyphen options are a relatively new addition to UNIX.

For example, here is an excerpt from the Solaris 9 man page for tar:
tar c [ bBeEfFhiklnopPqvwX@ [0-7]] [block] [tarfile]
[exclude-file] {-I include-file | -C directory | file |
file} …

I don’t know when the hyphen options were implemented in tar, but I suspect that there are still versions of tar that would gag on a -cf. The hyphenless syntax should work everywhere.

By: grinch

grinch — Wed, 14 Jan 2004 14:20:22 +0000

The example should be tar -cf archive.tar * (note the hyphen)