"One of the most common programs on Linux systems for packaging
files is the venerable tar. tar is short for tape archive, and
originally, it would archive your files to a tape device.Now,
you're more likely to use a file to make your archive. To use a
tarfile, use the command-line option -f . To create a new tarfile,
use the command-line option -c. To extract files from a tarfile,
use the option -x. You also can compress the resulting tarfile via
two methods. To use bzip2, use the -j option, or for gzip, use the
-z option.
"Instead of using a tarfile, you can output your tarfile to
stdout or input your tarfile from stdin by using a hyphen (-). With
these options, you can tar up a directory and all of its
subdirectories by using:"