Archive and Compression Commands

Commands for creating, extracting, and inspecting compressed archives.

gzip

Compress files using the gzip algorithm.

gzip file.txt                               # produces file.txt.gz
gzip -k file.txt                            # keep original
gzip -9 file.txt                            # best compression

gunzip

Decompress gzip-compressed files.

gunzip file.txt.gz
gunzip -k file.txt.gz                       # keep compressed file

tar

Create and extract tape archives.

# Create a tar archive
tar cf archive.tar dir/
 
# Create a gzip-compressed tar archive
tar czf archive.tar.gz dir/
 
# Extract an archive
tar xf archive.tar
 
# Extract a gzip-compressed archive
tar xzf archive.tar.gz
 
# List contents without extracting
tar tf archive.tar
 
# Extract to a specific directory
tar xf archive.tar -C /home/agent/output/

zcat

View the contents of gzip-compressed files without decompressing.

zcat file.txt.gz
zcat file.txt.gz | grep "pattern"