How do I tar a directory of files and folders without including the directory itself?

Question

I typically do:

tar -czvf my_directory.tar.gz my_directory

What if I just want to include everything (including any hidden system files) in my_

Answer 1

I would propose the following Bash function (first argument is the path to the dir, second argument is the basename of resulting archive):

function tar_dir_contents ()
{
    local DIRPATH="$1"
    local TARARCH="$2.tar.gz"
    local ORGIFS="$IFS"
    IFS=$'\n'
    tar -C "$DIRPATH" -czf "$TARARCH" $( ls -a "$DIRPATH" | grep -v '\(^\.$\)\|\(^\.\.$\)' )
    IFS="$ORGIFS"
}

You can run it in this way:

$ tar_dir_contents /path/to/some/dir my_archive

and it will generate the archive my_archive.tar.gz within current directory. It works with hidden (.*) elements and with elements with spaces in their filename.