Bash - Tar and Un-tar (.tar.gz or .tgz)

Compress

Entire Directory or a Single File

tar -czvf name-of-archive.tar.gz /path/to/directory-or-file

-c Create an archive.

-z Compress the archive with gzip.

-v Verbose

-f Specify the filename of the archive.

Un-compress / De-compress / Extract an Archive

The following command will extract the contents of archive.tar.gz to the current directory.

tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz

-x This specifies you want to extract an archive instead of create one.

tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz -C /tmp

-C Extract to specific directory

Compress to GZIP archive (.gz)

The following command will compress the contents of archive.json to the current directory and delete the existing file. The resulting file is archive.json.gz.

gzip archive.json

De-compress GZIP archive (.gz)

The following command will extract the contents of archive.json.gz to the current directory and delete the existing file. The resulting file is archive.json.

gzip -d archive.json.gz

Compress to ZIP

zip myfile.zip filename.txt

zip -r ~/dir.zip ./