How does tar work for archiving?

tar creates and extracts archives (originally "tape archive"). The most common operations: tar -czf archive.tar.gz directory/ creates a gzip-compressed archive (c=create, z=gzip, f=file). tar -xzf archive.tar.gz extracts a gzip archive (x=extract). tar -cjf archive.tar.bz2 dir/ uses bzip2 (better compression, slower). tar -xf archive.tar.gz -C /target/ extracts to a specific directory. tar -tzf archive.tar.gz lists contents without extracting. A common mnemonic for flags: create, extract, verbose (show files), z (gzip), f (filename follows). tar is the standard archiving tool on Linux for backups and software distribution.