Menu
As a primarily Windows developer, perhaps I'm missing something cultural in the Linux community, but it has always confused me.
When downloading something that the files are first put into a .tar archive then zipped. Why the two-step process? Doesn't zipping achieve the file grouping? Is there some other benefit that I'm not aware of?
811
In computing, tar is a computer software utility for collecting many files into one archive file, often referred to as a tarball, for distribution or backup purposes. The name is derived from "tape archive", as it was originally developed to write data to sequential I/O devices with no file system of their own.
By breaking the file data up into small chunks and compressing them separately, it allows you to extract specific files or parts of files without having to decompress everything in the archive before it.
Wood tar is still used to seal traditional wooden boats and the roofs of historic, shingle-roofed churches, as well as painting exterior walls of log buildings. Tar is also a general disinfectant.
The advantages of tar: Tar, when it comes to compression has a compression ratio of 50%, which means it compresses efficiently. Drastically reduces the size of packaged files and folders. Tar does not alter the features of files and directories.
bzip and gzip work on single files, not groups of files. Plain old zip (and pkzip) operate on groups of files and have the concept of the archive built-in.
The *nix philosophy is one of the small tools that do specific jobs very well and can be chained together. That's why there are two tools here that have specific tasks, and they're designed to fit well together. It also means you can use tar to group files and then you have a choice of a compression tool (bzip, gzip, etc).
109
If you love us? You can donate to us via Paypal or buy me a coffee so we can maintain and grow! Thank you!
Donate Us With
