Opening a .tar.gz file with a single command

Question

When I download a .tar.gz file, I open it with two commands, first gunzip and then tar.

Is it possible to open it with just one command?

Answer 1

tar xzf file.tar.gz

The letters are:

• x - extract
• z - gunzip the input
• f - Read from a file, not stdin

Answer 2

You can use tar with a "z" argument

tar xvfz mytar.tar.gz

Answer 3

The only thing that I would add is that z usually only works on gnu tar. The typical UNIX tar won't have this in my experience at least. – Jon Mar 16 at 16:19

The z option works well on my OS-X 10.5 as well.

When it comes to memorizing, I think it´s easy to think of what you want and not just some letters.

1. If you want to create an archive, then c will be the first option, else x will be the first option if you want to extract.
2. If you want to compress/decompress with the gzip/gunzip program, then the next option should be z for zip. (All archives ending with .gz must be unzipped with the z option)
3. The last mandatory option is f for the file.

Then you usually end up with these two commands:

• tar czf file.tar.gz /folder_to_archive/*
• tar xzf file.tar.gz

Answer 4

Untar Single file from tar File compressed file

To extract a single file called video.mpeg from video.tar use the following command as given below example.

# tar -xvf video.tar video.mpeg

video.mpeg

Extracting Single file from tar.gz File

Use the following command to extract a single file codefile.xml from websitecode.tar.gz archive file

# tar -zxvf websitecode.tar.gz code.xml

code.xml

Extracting Single file from tar.bz2 File

Use the command to extract single file file.html from websitecode.tar.bz2

# tar -jxvfwebsitecode.tar.bz2 home/website/file.html

/home/website/file.html

Also you can read more about all the tar commands at This link explains all the useful tar commands available in linux

Answer 5

How do I extract a gz file?

Use guzip command as follows:

$ gunzip file.gz

OR

$ gzip -d file.gz

How do I extract a tar.gz or .tgz file?

Files with extension tar.gz or .tgz are tar files compressed with gzip. On Unix system extract them with following command:

$ gunzip < file.tar.gz | tar xvf -
$ gunzip < file.tgz | tar xvf -

If you have GNU tar (Linux system) you can use the z option directly:

$ tar xvzf file.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf file.tgz

To read more go to http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/howto-compress-expand-gz-files/

Answer 6

If you don't have gnu tar it is still possible to open the file in a single step (although technically still two commands) using a pipe

zcat file.tar.gz |tar x