tar and gzip: Archiving and Compression Patterns

Developers forget tar flag order, don't understand the difference between compression algorithms, or create archives that expand in unexpected locations.

Use tar with the right flags and always verify before extracting.

# Create compressed archive
tar -czf archive.tar.gz /path/to/dir/

# Create with bzip2 (better compression, slower)
tar -cjf archive.tar.bz2 /path/to/dir/

# Create with xz (best compression, slowest)
tar -cJf archive.tar.xz /path/to/dir/

# List contents without extracting
tar -tzf archive.tar.gz

# Extract to specific directory
tar -xzf archive.tar.gz -C /target/dir/

# Extract single file
tar -xzf archive.tar.gz path/inside/archive/file.txt

# Create archive excluding a directory
tar -czf backup.tar.gz --exclude='./node_modules' --exclude='./.git' .

# Pipe directly over SSH
tar -czf - /local/dir | ssh user@host 'tar -xzf - -C /remote/dir'

tar -c creates, -x extracts, -t lists, -f specifies file, -z/-j/-J select gzip/bzip2/xz. The f flag must immediately precede the filename. Piping over SSH avoids writing a local temp file.