(tar.info.gz) Definitions

 
 Some Definitions
 ================
 
    The `tar' program is used to create and manipulate `tar' archives.
 An "archive" is a single file which contains the contents of many
 files, while still identifying the names of the files, their owner(s),
 and so forth.  (In addition, archives record access permissions, user
 and group, size in bytes, and last modification time.  Some archives
 also record the file names in each archived directory, as well as other
 file and directory information.)  You can use `tar' to "create" a new
 archive in a specified directory.
 
    The files inside an archive are called "members".  Within this
 manual, we use the term "file" to refer only to files accessible in the
 normal ways (by `ls', `cat', and so forth), and the term "member" to
 refer only to the members of an archive.  Similarly, a "file name" is
 the name of a file, as it resides in the filesystem, and a "member
 name" is the name of an archive member within the archive.
 
    The term "extraction" refers to the process of copying an archive
 member (or multiple members) into a file in the filesystem.  Extracting
 all the members of an archive is often called "extracting the archive".
 The term "unpack" can also be used to refer to the extraction of many
 or all the members of an archive.  Extracting an archive does not
 destroy the archive's structure, just as creating an archive does not
 destroy the copies of the files that exist outside of the archive.  You
 may also "list" the members in a given archive (this is often thought
 of as "printing" them to the standard output, or the command line), or
 "append" members to a pre-existing archive.  All of these operations
 can be performed using `tar'.
Info Catalog
(tar.info.gz) Book Contents
(tar.info.gz) Introduction
(tar.info.gz) What tar Does
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