Example 1-18 Packing and unpacking files tar

• If we have a data bank consisting of many files, the wisest way to move them from one computer to another one, is to pack all directories and files to a single tar file. The tar command does not reduce the total size of the files but only bundle them into a one single file. As geophysicists, we often receive data and softwares from others as bundled tar files. To unpack them we need the tar command.

• tar -cf archive.tar foo bar

• # Creates archive.tar from files foo and bar.

• tar -tvf archive.tar

• # List all files in archive.tar verbosely.

• tar -xf archive.tar

• # Extract all files from archive.tar.