Linux tar usage

tar [options]

Operations:
[-]A --catenate --concatenate
[-]c --create
[-]d --diff --compare
[-]r --append
[-]t --list
[-]u --update
[-]x --extract --get
--delete

Common Options:
-C, --directory DIR
-f, --file F
-j, --bzip2
-p, --preserve-permissions
-v, --verbose
-z, --gzip

--recursion
recurse into directories


Example

To tar and zip the whole directory

tar -xcv filename.tar.gz /target/directory

To extract the tar file

tar -zxv filename.tar.gz -C /target/directory