Tar Command: Create A Compressed Archive And Write It To A File Using The File Extension To Automatically Determine The Compression Program
An engineer would use this tar command when needing to create a compressed archive of multiple files for efficient storage or transfer while specifying the output format as .tar.xz to automatically apply the XZ compression method. Exact CLI syntax to create a compressed archive and write it to a file using the file extension to automatically determine the compression program using Tar.
Command Syntax
tar caf <path/to/target.tar.xz> <path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...>tar caf <path/to/target.tar.xz> <path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...>Command Breakdown
tar is the base executable for this command.
FAQ
Purpose: Exact syntax to create a compressed archive and write it to a file using the file extension to automatically determine the compression program using Tar.
Test path: Replace placeholders and run destructive commands in a disposable workspace first.
Flag behavior: Tool version, platform, and shell can change behavior.
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Related Operations
tar cf <path/to/target.tar> <path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...> Tar Command: Create A Gzipped Archive From A Directory Using Relative Paths tar czf <path/to/target.tar.gz> -C <path/to/directory> . Tar Command: Extract Files Matching A Pattern From An Archive File tar xf <path/to/source.tar> --wildcards "<*.html>" Tar Command: Create A Gzipped Archive And Write It To A File tar czf <path/to/target.tar.gz> <path/to/file1 path/to/file2 ...> Tar Command: Extract A Compressed Archive File Into The Current Directory Verbosely tar xvf <path/to/source.tar[.gz|.bz2|.xz]> Alternative Approaches
Alternative tools for similar operation intents.
7z a <path/to/archive.7z> -mx=<0|1|3|5|7|9> <path/to/file_or_directory> 7zr Command: Set Compression Level 7zr a <path/to/archive.7z> -mx=<0|1|3|5|7|9> <path/to/file_or_directory> 7za Command: Set Compression Level 7za a <path/to/archive.7z> -mx=<0|1|3|5|7|9> <path/to/file_or_directory> 7zr Command: Set Compression Level 7zr a <path/to/archive.7z> -mx=<0|1|3|5|7|9> <path/to/file_or_directory> Afconvert Command: Use Specific Compression Level afconvert -X<0..7> <path/to/input_file> <path/to/output_file1 path/to/output_file2 ...>