These two commands should fit most of your use cases: tar cf dir.tar dir # mnemonic: 'create file' <tar-file-name> <dir-to-tar> tar xf dir.tar(.gz

These two commands should fit most of your use cases: tar cf dir.tar dir # mnemonic: 'create file' <tar-file-name> <dir-to-tar> tar xf dir.tar(.gz|bz2|...) # mnemonic: 'eXtract file' <tar-file-name> On systems with "modern" versions of tar `-x` is capable of recognizing which compression format is used and doesn't require the explicit `-j/z` flags you usually see.