gzip and gunzip

gzip (GNU Zip) is the command used to compress files and gunzip (GNU unzip) is command used to decompress files. Files compressed with gzip have a .gz suffix.

Example:

To compress a file using gzip you would type:

gzip file_name

Specific Example:

To compress a file name budget.ods (.ods is the extension for an OpenDocument Spreadsheet) you would type:

gzip  budget.ods

tar (for tar.gz and tar.bz2 files)

tar (tape archive) is the command used to archive/package and extract tar files.

To extract a tar.gz file you would type:

tar -xzvf name_of_archive.tar.gz

Specific example:

To extract the file Joomla_1.0.11-Stable-Full_Package.tar.gz in the current directory you would type:

tar -xzvf Joomla_1.0.11-Stable-Full_Package.tar.gz

To extract a tar.bz2 file you would type:

tar jxf name_of_archive.tar.bz2

Specific example:

To extract the file Joomla_1.0.11-Stable-Full_Package.tar.bz2 in the current directory you would type:

tar jxf Joomla_1.0.11-Stable-Full_Package.tar.gz

To archive a directory using tar you would type:

tar -czvf file_name.tar.gz directory_to_archive

Specific Example:

To create an archive of john_doe's home folder you would type

tar -czvf john_doe.tar.gz /home/john_doe

*Note: When tar used to create an archive the file ends up being a compressed tar file with the .gz suffix (gzip compression).

unzip (for .zip files)

ZIP archives are most commonly used in Windows/MS-DOS based environments.

In Linux, you can use the “unzip” command to extract,list or test ZIP files. Below are the common tasks I use “unzip” for.

Extract the contents of a ZIP file into it’s own directory and also create subdirectories as needed.

# unzip [filename].zip

Extract the contents of a ZIP file into the current directory only. No subdirectories will be created.

# unzip -j [filename].zip

Extract the contents of a ZIp file into a custom directory.

# unzip -d [target directory] [filename].zip

List the contents of a ZIP file.

# unzip -l [filename].zip

Test the integrity of a ZIP file and it’s contents.

 # unzip -t [filename].zip

# unzip -tq [filename].zip (Only shows summary)

Extract the contents of a ZIP file only if the files already exist in the target directory. Good for upgrades.

# unzip -f [filename].zip

# unzip -fo [filename].zip (non interactive. Yes to all)

Extract the contents of a ZIP file if the contents are newer then what’s available in the target directory or don’t exist yet. Good for upgrades.

# unzip -u [filename].zip

# unzip -uo [filename].zip (non interactive. Yes to all)