Linux tar Extract Files Command

To extract files from a compressed tar archive on Linux, you can use the tar command with the xvf options. The x option specifies that you want to extract files, the v option stands for “verbose” and will show you the names of the files being extracted, and the f option is used to specify the archive file name.

The general syntax for the tar command to extract files is:

If the archive is compressed with gzip or bzip2, you need to add the appropriate option after the f option. For example, to extract files from an archive named archive_name.tar.gz, you can use the following command:

Similarly, to extract files from an archive named archive_name.tar.bz2, you can use the following command:

Once you execute the command, the files will be extracted to the current directory. If you want to extract files to a specific directory, you can use the -C option, followed by the directory path. For example:

This will extract the files to the /path/to/extract/to/ directory. Note that the directory must exist before you can extract files into it.