Common tar Compress and Extract Commands on Linux (Concise)

A tar quick reference: archive only, gzip/bzip2 compression, extract to a path, and listing contents without extracting.

Compress

tar -cvf mydata.tar mydata          archive only, no compression
tar -zcvf mydata.tar.gz mydata      archive then gzip
tar -jcvf mydata.tar.bz2 mydata     archive then bzip2
tar -cvf mydata.tar ./*             archive everything in the current dir
tar -cvf mydata.tar * .[!.]*        archive all files including hidden ones

Extract

tar -xvf mydata.tar
tar -zxvf mydata.tar.gz
tar -jxvf mydata.tar.bz2
tar -zxvf ./mydata.tar.gz -C /home/app/   extract to /home/app/

List contents without extracting

gzip -dc mydata.tar.gz | tar tvf -      # .tar.gz
bzip2 -dc mydata.tar.bz2 | tar tvf -    # .tar.bz2
tar tvf mydata.tar                      # .tar