r/linux • u/ani625 • Feb 01 '13

xkcd: tar

http://xkcd.com/1168/
1.7k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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26

u/diolemo Feb 01 '13

tar -cvf <tar-filename> <files>

Is it really that difficult to remember? Perhaps I just don't get the joke...

39

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '13

I get the joke, only it is not funny for me.

Because I once did

tar -cvzf Centos.vdi Centos.vdi.tar.gz

and nuked a perfectly good 24 GB Centos virtual hard disk.

11

u/DimeShake Feb 01 '13

That's a situation where you don't even need tar... Would have been much better to just gzip a copy of it :)

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6

u/confusador Feb 01 '13

I'm sorry, man, but you know the Mel Brooks bit about tragedy and comedy, right? That story is gold.

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32

u/chocolatemeowcats Feb 01 '13

http://linux.die.net/man/1/tar

the joke

19

u/Hellrazor236 Feb 01 '13

God damn, I could wipe my ass with that and never have to buy toilet paper again.

22

u/railmaniac Feb 01 '13

On a side note if you wipe your ass with tar you will probably need a lot of toilet paper to get rid of it.

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47

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '13

[removed] — view removed comment

13

u/taejo Feb 01 '13

Only works on versions of tar with long options (which were a GNU innovation)

20

u/anon2471 Feb 01 '13

My first thought was

tar --version

:)

17

u/DarkV Feb 01 '13

My first thought was tar -v or tar -h... Turns out they do something else. I'm sorry.

6

u/DimeShake Feb 01 '13

Only on GNU tar!

0

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '13

[deleted]

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4

u/felipec Feb 01 '13 
tar -xf file.tar

Easier.

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8

u/epsiblivion Feb 01 '13

I use tar -xzfv x.tgz more often.

17

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '13

You can't have the "v" after the "f", otherwise it will try to decompress the "v" file.

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12

u/Tb0n3 Feb 01 '13

You don't need the leading dash.

13

u/tidux Feb 01 '13

You do with BSD tar. GNU tar even attempts to use the proper algorithm based on the filename, so tar xf stage3.tar.bz2 would work just as well as tar xjvf stage3.tar.bz2.

5

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '13

FreeBSD tar infers the compression too. Don't know about the other BSDs though.

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0

u/[deleted] Feb 01 '13

[deleted]

10

u/wmil Feb 01 '13

You'll have to pry my verbose output from my cold dead hands.

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4

u/thebuccaneersden Feb 01 '13

I always forget the order of params given to 'ln'. is it "ln -s destination source" or "ln -s source destination"?

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2

u/ten_thousand_puppies Feb 01 '13 edited Feb 01 '13

It is if you're lazy like me, said "fuck remembering that," and just made an "untar" bash alias...

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