Q. How do I list the contents of a tar or tar.gz file?
A. GNU/tar is an archiving program designed to store and extract files from an archive file known as a tarfile. You can create a tar file or compressed tar file tar. However sometime you need to list the contents of a tar or tar.gz file on screen before extracting the all files.
Task: List the contents of a tar file
Use the following command:
$ tar -tvf file.tar
Task: List the contents of a tar.gz file
Use the following command:
$ tar -ztvf file.tar.gz
Task: List the contents of a tar.bz2 file
Use the following command:
$ tar -jtvf file.tar.bz2
Where,
- t: List the contents of an archive
- v: Verbosely list files processed (display detailed information)
- z: Filter the archive through gzip so that we can open compressed (decompress) .gz tar file
- j: Filter archive through bzip2, use to decompress .bz2 files.
- f filename: Use archive file called filename
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{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks a lot Vivek…This article is very useful for me….
Perfect!
I don’t know why I always forget this!
Also the ‘j’ trick is killer! I always just try to use ‘z’, and then give up when bzip won’t play. Now I just need to remember … use j in stead of z when bzip.
great and thx..
thanks!
Rule of Thumb -
{
Use ‘z’ while compressing/decompressing/listing the file with GZIP.
Use ‘j’ while compressing/decompressing/listing the file with BZIP2.
}
- with tar command.
Thanks
Amit Verma
The exact thing I was looking for, worked like a charm! :)
Good Work!!!
Thanks!!!
keep it up!!!
;)
Thanks for the helpful contests
Thanks a lot for this post guys …:)
Keep it up …
thanks. I’m too lazy to read the man page.
$ tar -tvf file.tar works for all three file formats.
$ unzip -l works for zip files
Thanks it works fine however do you know if there is a faster way maybe? I have a 6GB gzip file and it takes ages to list the contents. For smaller files it is ok but for big files it is a pain.
man pages are too long, thanks vivek.
@Stefan, u cud try
now i assume u may be looking for a certain file in that big gzip, so
and u can now check for multiple names without the initial wait of listing the big gz’s files.
I know this coz i have just done it thanks to reading this blog.thx again Vivek.
I’m trying to find and display, but this isn’t working for me..
find -name “.gz” | tar -tvf {};
try this:
find -name “*.gz” -exec tar -tvf {} \;
I am getting following error while looking for content of the tar file
$ tar -ztvf
tar: illegal option — z
Usage: tar -{c|r|t|u|x} [ -BdDEFhilmopRsUvw ] [ -Number ] [ -f TarFile ]
[ -b Blocks ] [ -S [ Feet ] | [ Feet@Density ] | [ Blocksb ] ]
[ -L InputList ] [-X ExcludeFile] [ -N Blocks ] [ -C Directory ] File …
Usage: tar {c|r|t|u|x} [ bBdDEfFhilLXmNopRsSUvw[0-9] ]
[ Blocks ] [ TarFile ] [ InputList ] [ ExcludeFile ]
[ [ Feet ] | [ Feet@Density ] | [ Blocksb ] ] [-C Directory ] File …
-z option option is not working on AIX
Sequence is important ! tar -ztfv will fail with error ‘v’ not found where as tar -ztvf works – since you need to specify the filename after the f option. Cheers!