troye@cs.mcgill.ca (Troy ENGLISH) (02/12/91)
I've used ftp to get some files which are *.tar.Z What exactly do the .tar and .Z stand for and how can i convert them to a format that I can use. Thanks. Troy
jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) (02/12/91)
In article <1991Feb11.194436.2124@cs.mcgill.ca>, troye@cs.mcgill.ca (Troy ENGLISH) writes: |> I've used ftp to get some files which are *.tar.Z |> What exactly do the .tar and .Z stand for and how |> can i convert them to a format that I can use. First of all, I hope that when you transferred the files, you used ftp's "binary" mode. If you left ftp in the default mode it starts up in, it is possible that the files are corrupted. Second, on to the suffixes. The ".Z" suffix indicates a file that has been compressed with the "compress" program (type "man compress" for more information). You can uncompress the file using "uncompress". Or, you can use "zcat" the file to uncompress it to the standard output, and pipe the result to tar to do the file extraction. But I'm getting ahead of myself. The ".tar" suffix implies that the file is a tar ("tar" originally stood for "Tape ARchive", I believe) of a directory tree (type "man tar" for more information). After uncompressing the .tar.Z file, you can extract the files from the tar by typing "tar xf filename.tar". If you want more detailed listings of what's being extracted, you can use "xvf" instead of just "xf". Finally, as I pointed out above, you can pipe the output of zcat directly into tar in order to do the extraction; the advantage of this is that you never actually have to save the uncompressed version of the file to disk, which saves on I/O time to the disk and on disk space. To do this, you would use "zcat filename.tar.Z | tar xf -". Note that the "-" tells tar to read from the standard input. The ".Z" suffix is automatically added to a filename when it is compressed; however, the ".tar" suffix isn't automatically added to any filename by tar or anything like that; it's just a widely accepted convention for making it clear that a file is in the tar format. The man pages for compress, uncompress, zcat and tar should provide you with any additional information you need. -- Jonathan Kamens USnail: MIT Project Athena 11 Ashford Terrace jik@Athena.MIT.EDU Allston, MA 02134 Office: 617-253-8085 Home: 617-782-0710
kevinf@informix.com (Kevin Franden) (04/18/91)
Hello all!
I hope this hasn't been covered too recently. I have just returned
from a long absence from the net. I wandered through as many back
articals as we keep but I didn't see anything.
I have managed to (finally) secure a(n) (outdated by now) copy
of the GNU emacs source. It is, however, in TarZ format.
Just what IS a TarZ file anyhow? Sorry if that sounds ignorant but I've
never seen one before. I'm told it's a block-by-block compression of
tar output... I dunno.
I know how to use tar, I know how to use compress but this beast is a
mystery to me! How on earth can I get at the insides?
Thanks in advance.
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Kevin Franden UUCP: {pyramid|uunet}!infmx!kevinf
Informix Software Inc
fprintf(DISCALIMER,"I said what I said and not my employer");
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There are Lies, Damn lies, Statistics, Benchmarks, and Delivery datesweimer@garden.ssd.kodak.com (Gary Weimer (253-7796)) (04/26/91)
In article <kevinf.671993397@tofu>, kevinf@informix.com (Kevin Franden) writes: |> |> Hello all! |> |> I hope this hasn't been covered too recently. I have just returned |> from a long absence from the net. I wandered through as many back |> articals as we keep but I didn't see anything. |> |> I have managed to (finally) secure a(n) (outdated by now) copy |> of the GNU emacs source. It is, however, in TarZ format. |> |> |> Just what IS a TarZ file anyhow? Sorry if that sounds ignorant but I've |> never seen one before. I'm told it's a block-by-block compression of |> tar output... I dunno. |> |> I know how to use tar, I know how to use compress but this beast is a |> mystery to me! How on earth can I get at the insides? TarZ (or .tar.Z) files have been tar'ed and then compress'ed, as in: tar cvf - files | compress > file.TarZ To undo this you could use: uncompress -c file.TarZ | tar xvf - Since I use this a lot, I have the following aliases for csh: # uncompress/extract alias ux 'uncompress -c \!:1 | tar xvf - \!:2*' # uncompress/list table of contents # (Note that PAGER must be defined -- I use 'less', 'more' is next-best) alias ut 'uncompress -c \!:1 | tar tf - | $PAGER' # tar/compress alias tc 'tar cvf - \!* | compress > \!:1.tar.Z' weimer@ssd.kodak.com ( Gary Weimer )