tar -vczfx123 ought to do it

Wouldn't tar --help suffice? Afaik, it returns exit code 0.

~# tar -h
tar: You must specify one of the '-Acdtrux', '--delete' or '--test-label' options
Try 'tar --help' or 'tar --usage' for more information.
***********************************************
WARNING: Self destruct sequence initiated
***********************************************

~# tar -h || tar --help

A little trick I learned on here was to imagine yourself as a little evil man saying "Extract ze files!" in a German accent. Extract ze files >>> xzf.

tar --help

tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz

eXtract Zhe Vucking File

xtract ze vucking file

If you can't tar to a pipe into ssh to a remote host and untar into an arbitrary location there, are you really using Unix?

I remember those 2 and thats all I need.
tar -extrakt ze file
tar -compress ze file

tar --help is a valid command

tar xvf somearchive.tar

Is that right? )= I'm scared I lost.

Surely tar --help is a valid tar command, right?

tar

Done. That's a valid command, no error code, nothing. KISS!

tar: You must specify one of the '-Acdtrux', '--delete' or '--test-label' options
Try 'tar --help' or 'tar --usage' for more information.
zsh: exit 2     tar

I know this is a meme, but I actually find tar fairly easy to remember.

tar -xf $archive is extract file

tar -czf $archive dir/ is create zipped (compressed) file and the positional arguments are the files to add to the archive.

And this is 99% of my usage. You can skip -f $archive to use stdin/stdout or use -C to change directory (weird name but logically tar always extracts to the current directory). There is also a flag to list which I always forget and lookup each time, but I list much less often. -v is useful for verbose.

Overall there are much harder commands to remember. find always gets me if I go beyond -name. ps, tree and ls (beyond -Al) always get me to open the man page.

man tar

“Yeah nvm, we’re fucked”

The command that I can never get right the first time is ln. I always end up creating a dead link inside my target folder, even when I read the man page directly prior.

Normally I would say view the man page (as a command). Though for some reason when making the thinnest distro possible, the OS team at my job got rid of man.

Wtf man.

tar xzvf file.tar.gz I got it memorized after installing gentoo over and over again from stage 3 back in 2005

I find it's a lot easier if you think of it in term of tapes, which is what it was originally designed for (Tape ARchiver). It's up there with makefiles for an actually really cool concept that nobody appreciates or even necessarily understands now.

(Well, I guess filesystems are the actual cool concept, from the historical perspective, but seeing the interplay with just tapes is the novel part to me)

you wouldn’t tarball a bomb

What if i use bing instead of google

tar -tvf is a favorite of mine.

At some point, I realized tar xf is enough for extracting a file, so that's what I'm always using now.

I wish more people knew about dtrx (Do The Right eXtraction).

I just remember zxvf, but if I have to do anything else then extract a tar.gz we’re fucked.

tldr tar | head -n 1

7zz x *

tar -xvf is the only one I know

And I think it was tar -cvf for creating .tar files?

I always liked dtrx (do the right extraction)

Btw, GNU tar has long options.

tar -h

I'll take my award in all ones please