Ubuntu – What are the different arguments passed to tar command

tar

What is the purpose of -xvzf arguments when we untar any tarBall file and what are the other arguments passed over the command?

I found it mentioned in many books but can't find anything.

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Just type man tar in the terminal for the tar command manual.
You can also view it online at http://man.cx/tar or at http://linuxcommand.org/man_pages/tar1.html (Thanks to @Rinzwind)

The meaning of -xvzf is

-x --extract = extract files from an archive
-v, --verbose = verbosely list files processed
-z, --gzip = gzipped files eg. for tar.gz packages
-f, --file ARCHIVE = use archive file or device ARCHIVE

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Ubuntu – the difference with all the different types of .tar archives

The .gz, .xz, .bz2, .7z, .lz, .z suffixes are used to make clear that the file is compressed with said compression algorithm. Its use is not limited to .tar files, you will also see files such as initrd.gz (an compressed initial ramdisk) or manual.txt.gz (for a compressed text document). You may also see file.tgz which is also indicates a gzip-compressed tarball (like file.tar.gz).

The file extension is a convention, it does not necessarily describe the file contents. To check what kind of file you are handling, use the file command. Example:

$ file data.tar.gz
data.tar.gz: gzip compressed data, from Unix
$ gunzip -c data.tar.gz | file -
/dev/stdin: POSIX tar archive (GNU)

In my experience, gzip-compressed files (.gz) are the most common ones. It is fast in compressing and decompressing, though there are other algorithms that yield better compression ratios.

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Ubuntu – the difference with all the different types of .tar archives

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