TAR(1) TAR(1) NAME tar - archiver SYNOPSIS tar key [ file ... ] DESCRIPTION Tar saves and restores file trees. It is most often used to transport a tree of files from one system to another. The key is a string that contains at most one function letter plus optional modifiers. Other arguments to the command are names of files or directories to be dumped or restored. A directory name implies all the contained files and subdirec- tories (recursively). The function is one of the following letters: c Create a new archive with the given files as contents. x Extract the named files from the archive. If a file is a directory, the directory is extracted recursively. Modes are restored if possible. If no file argument is given, extract the entire archive. If the archive con- tains multiple entries for a file, the latest one wins. t List all occurrences of each file in the archive, or of all files if there are no file arguments. r The named files are appended to the archive. The modifiers are: v (verbose) Print the name of each file treated preceded by the function letter. With t, give more details about the archive entries. f Use the next argument as the name of the archive instead of the default standard input (for keys x and t) or standard output (for keys c and r). u Use the next (numeric) argument as the user id for files in the output archive. This is only useful when moving files to a non-Plan 9 system. g Use the next (numeric) argument as the group id for files in the output archive. R When extracting, ignore leading slash on file names, i.e., extract all files relative to the current direc- tory. Page 1 Plan 9 (printed 12/30/24) TAR(1) TAR(1) T Modifies the behavior of x to set the mode and modified time of each file to that specified in the archive. EXAMPLES Tar can be used to copy hierarchies thus: {cd fromdir && tar c .} | {cd todir && tar xT} SOURCE /sys/src/cmd/tar.c SEE ALSO ar(1), bundle(1), tapefs(1) BUGS There is no way to ask for any but the last occurrence of a file. File path names are limited to 100 characters. The tar format allows specification of links and symbolic links, concepts foreign to Plan 9: they are ignored. Page 2 Plan 9 (printed 12/30/24)