A Short Look On The TAR File Format

TAR files are very unique in as much as the way they are compressed. We have the basic way in extracting data from a TAR file, but there are a lot of ways in having a file “tarred”. With each unique way of tarring files, there can also be a lot of ways in extracting files from them. The basic concept of tar balls (or tar files with the compressed files inside them) is tarring the files and then compressing it and then distributing it via an external source.

TAR is a program that is used for archiving and distribution. It′s like a distribution list that has the goods attached behind it. The difference with zipping is TAR files DO NOT compress the files attached to them. TAR files organize the files, but the files are still in their uncompressed form. TAR files usually end with the extension “.tar” for easy identification.

Numerous compression software such as GZip or BZip2 do the compression process. This is to improve transmission rate over the internet, especially if the tar ball is being downloaded. The tar ball takes a new extension when it is compressed. For example, if the tar ball is compressed by the GZip software, the tar ball “example.tar” becomes “example.tar.gz” or “example.tgz”. If the tar ball was compressed by BZip2, the file “example.tar” becomes “example.tar.bz2″ or “example.tbz”.

If this is the case, in order to retrieve the file from the TAR ball, what you need to do first is to uncompress the file and then retrieve the file from inside the TAR. That means taking out the extension file name from the TAR ball, and then extracting the data from the TAR file.

You can use “bunzip2 example.tar.bz2″ or “bunzip2 example.tz” for the BZip2-compressed tar ball. For the GZip-compressed tar ball, you may use “gunzip example.tar.gz” or “gunzip example.bz2″. These commands are used to remove the compression wrapper from your TAR ball. Also, there are several GUI software that can be found across the internet. These programs can deal with decompression without you having to deal with troublesome command lines. There are also online web sites that offer TAR decompression and extraction. Just upload your TAR ball and retrieve your extracted data, seconds or minutes after.

To find out exactly how to have your TAR files extracted, visit this website about online TAR file opening.