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img title=“I don’t know what’s worse–the fact that after 15 years of using tar I still can’t keep the flags straight, or that after 15 years of technological advancement I’m still mucking with tar flags that were 15 years old when I started.”

tar -h

I’ll take my award in all ones please

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

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

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?

LostXOR
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I had to pipe dd through gzip over SSH recently to locally image a disk on a cloud server. That was fun.

What the fuck lmao I didn’t know that was possible

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

Depends. Is it GNU tar, BSD tar or some old school Unix tar?

Double hyphen “long options” are a typical GNU thing.

tar -h?

DefederateLemmyMl
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~# 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
***********************************************

Ugh. Bsdtar:

-h (c and r modes only) Synonym for -L.

But it has --help too.

~# tar -h || tar --help
paraphrand
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That’s why those commands have two?

DefederateLemmyMl
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Yes, the terse Unix version, which needs to be supported for compatibility, and the more readable GNU long option

Krafty Kactus
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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.

Tb0n3
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Only works for tar.gz. Remember there’s also tar.xz, tar.bz, tar.bz2 and half have their own extractor flag. FUN. It’s usually J.

Zagorath
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The post only calls for “a valid tar command”, not that it has to work for any specific circumstance.

I don’t remember the last time I had to worry about the compression. I simply run tar xf myfile.tar.whatever and it works every time.

xigoi
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xaf (extract a file) auto-detects the format.

Extract Any File

Extract All Files

arthurpizza
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I still use that. 😅

Ziixe
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That sounds a lot like Czech, “ze” means “from” if you translate it into English

Looks, not sounds. Ahoj!

@Blackmist@feddit.uk
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tar --help

Aurelian
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Exactly what I would have done !

This is the way

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

Deebster
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I didn’t know about -d.

explainshell.com to the rescue!

They meant the command dtrx, the combination of dtrx as parameters to tar make no sense. Extract AND append?

Deebster
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haha, ok thanks. So https://github.com/dtrx-py/dtrx

I’d initially assumed that it was a mnemonic but yes, listing and appending and extracting together is nonsensical, as tar notes: tar: You may not specify more than one '-Acdtrux', '--delete' or '--test-label' option

Ayy Debian has been my main for like ten years. Dtrx is one of the ten things I apt immediately every time I have a re install

Or in this case, https://github.com/tldr-pages/tldr

And it’s fast implementation, https://github.com/dbrgn/tealdeer

👍Maximum Derek👍
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tar -tvf is a favorite of mine.

tar --help is a valid command

More of a request than a command, I’d have argued

I command you to show me the manual

@Aganim@lemmy.world
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For GNU tar it is, for any other version I would not be so sure. Especially when disabling an atomic bomb.

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

tar -extract -file

tar -compress -xz -file

tar -extract -any -file is easier, auto detect the compression based on filename.

exu
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I think GNU tar automatically detects the compression, making -a unnecessary in that case.

And -z. tar -xf foo.tar.{gz,xz,zstd,...} will work perfectly fine.

Tar Xtract Ze Vucking File

Edit: apparently someone else already mentioned this, oops

Nope - it was Unix not Linux. The minus makes the command invalid on many Unix versions of tar (though most modern BSD versions allow it)

ɐɥO
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Gonna blow up then I guess

tar -xvf is the only one I know

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

@SteveDinn@lemmy.ca
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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.

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

Same, but it all goes to shit when I need to create an archive

tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz

eXtract Zhe Vucking File

Sorry, it was Solaris - you just blew it up (the minus is invalid on many Unix versions of tar)

Inadvertent oracle attack.

Oh come on!

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