What Does ‘-‘ Mean as an Argument to a Command?

command linetar

I found this link on how to open tgz in one step.

gzip -dc target.tar.gz | tar xf -

What does the '-' mean?

Best Answer

It's a common convention to use - in a filename argument to mean stdin or stdout; tar follows the same convention. From the man page:

   -f, --file [HOSTNAME:]F
          use archive file or device F (default "-", meaning stdin/stdout)

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I figured it out!

I was running an x86 binary on a SPARC machine.

What does newermt mean in find command

find(1):

-newerXY reference
          Compares the timestamp of the current file with reference.   The
          reference  argument  is  normally the name of a file (and one of
          its timestamps is used for the comparison) but it may also be  a
          string  describing  an  absolute time.  X and Y are placeholders
          for other letters, and these letters select which time belonging
          to how reference is used for the comparison.

          a   The access time of the file reference
          B   The birth time of the file reference
          c   The inode status change time of reference
          m   The modification time of the file reference
          t   reference is interpreted directly as a time

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