Long ago someone taught me this memory trick for tar: imagine an angry German stereotype saying “eXtract Ze Vucking File”, thus -xzvf. No idea what it stands for but it does what I need most of the time.
x = extract, z = compress/decompress, v = verbose (list files added or extracted), f = filename follows.
You can leave off the 'z' if it's a tar without compression. If it's compressed, the extension is usually tgz, tar.Z, bz2, or something else other than tar.
You can leave off the 'v' if you don't want to see a list of which files are being added or extracted.
You can leave off the 'z' if it's a tar without compression. If it's compressed, the extension is usually tgz, tar.Z, bz2, or something else other than tar.
You can leave off the 'v' if you don't want to see a list of which files are being added or extracted.