How to list the contents of a tar archive?

Listing the Contents of a Tar Archive

Tar (Tape Archive) is a popular file archiving utility in the Linux operating system. It is used to combine multiple files and directories into a single archive file, which can then be easily transported, stored, or backed up. When you have a tar archive, it's often necessary to list the contents of the archive to see what files and directories are included.

Here's how you can list the contents of a tar archive:

Using the tar Command

The tar command provides several options to list the contents of an archive. The most common options are:

1. tar tf <archive_file>: This command lists the contents of the tar archive without extracting the files. The t option stands for "list" and the f option specifies the archive file.

Example:

$ tar tf my_archive.tar
file1.txt
directory/
directory/file2.txt

2. tar tvf <archive_file>: This command provides a more detailed listing of the contents, including file permissions, ownership, and timestamps. The v option stands for "verbose".

Example:

$ tar tvf my_archive.tar
-rw-r--r-- user1 user1 12 2023-04-01 12:34 file1.txt
drwxr-xr-x user1 user1 0 2023-04-01 12:35 directory/
-rw-r--r-- user1 user1 8 2023-04-01 12:35 directory/file2.txt

3. tar tzf <compressed_archive_file>: This command lists the contents of a gzip-compressed tar archive. The z option is used to specify the compression type.

Example:

$ tar tzf my_archive.tar.gz
file1.txt
directory/
directory/file2.txt

Using Third-Party Tools

While the tar command is the primary tool for working with tar archives, there are also some third-party tools that can provide additional features and functionality for listing the contents of an archive. One popular tool is lsar (List Tar Archive), which is part of the libarchive-tools package.

To install lsar on Ubuntu/Debian-based systems:

sudo apt-get install libarchive-tools

Then, you can use the lsar command to list the contents of a tar archive:

$ lsar my_archive.tar
file1.txt
directory/
directory/file2.txt

The lsar command provides a more user-friendly output and can also handle various archive formats, including zip, rar, and 7z.

Mermaid Diagram

Here's a simple Mermaid diagram that illustrates the process of listing the contents of a tar archive:

By using the tar command with the appropriate options or the lsar tool, you can easily list the contents of a tar archive and understand what files and directories are included in the archive.