What the heck is a tar file? Since the 1980s, tar has been the go-to method for bundling and archiving multiple files, simplifying the transfer and st

What is a tar file?

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2024-11-21 17:00:03

What the heck is a tar file? Since the 1980s, tar has been the go-to method for bundling and archiving multiple files, simplifying the transfer and storage of file collections on magnetic tape.

But, what exactly is a tar file, and how did a magnetic tape utility become the standard for archiving files even 40 years later?

The tar file format and command line utility was created in 1979, and has since been officially replaced by the pax utility in 2001. However, the popularity and ubiquity of tar has kept it around for decades as the de facto standard for archiving files on Unix-like systems.

The tar utility and format were designed specifically for the limitations and capabilities of magnetic tape drives used at the time. Where a hard drive can quickly seek to any location on a disk and store data in a non-sequential manner, linear tape drives can only read and write data sequentially. Getting to a specific file on a tape drive is a slow process that involves fast-forwarding or rewinding through meters of tape.

To create a tar file, use the tar command with the -c flag to create a new archive, and the -f flag to specify the output file.