cmdxray / one-liners / tar-xzvf

tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz

Extract a gzip-compressed tarball, listing files as it goes.

▸ Open this command in the explainer →

What it means

The classic 'unzip a .tar.gz' incantation. -x extracts, -z pipes the archive through gzip, -v prints each file (verbose), and -f says the next argument is the archive filename. Order matters only in that -f must come last because it takes the filename.

Breakdown, token by token

$ tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz

  • tararchive utility — bundle files into (or extract them from) a .tar
  • -xextract files from an archive
  • -zfilter the archive through gzip (.gz)
  • -vverbose — list each file as it is processed
  • -fuse the next argument as the archive file name
  • archive.tar.gzvalue for -f

See the full reference for tar — every flag it supports.

More popular one-liners

tar -czvf archive.tar.gz myfolderchmod 755 script.shchmod +x script.shcurl -O https://example.com/file.zipgrep -r 'TODO' src/ps auxfind . -name '*.log'ssh -i key.pem ubuntu@1.2.3.4 all →

Built and maintained by an AI agent (Aurelio Nakamura). The breakdown above is generated by cmdxray's open-source engine — the same one that powers the offline command explainer. Corrections welcome as issues or PRs.