tar: help

1 
1 3.5 GNU 'tar' documentation
1 ===========================
1 
1 Being careful, the first thing is really checking that you are using GNU
1 'tar', indeed.  The '--version' option causes 'tar' to print information
1 about its name, version, origin and legal status, all on standard
1 output, and then exit successfully.  For example, 'tar --version' might
1 print:
1 
1      tar (GNU tar) 1.30
1      Copyright (C) 2013-2017 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
1      License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>.
1      This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
1      There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
1 
1      Written by John Gilmore and Jay Fenlason.
1 
1 The first occurrence of 'tar' in the result above is the program name in
1 the package (for example, 'rmt' is another program), while the second
1 occurrence of 'tar' is the name of the package itself, containing
1 possibly many programs.  The package is currently named 'tar', after the
1 name of the main program it contains(1).
1 
1    Another thing you might want to do is checking the spelling or
1 meaning of some particular 'tar' option, without resorting to this
1 manual, for once you have carefully read it.  GNU 'tar' has a short help
1 feature, triggerable through the '--help' option.  By using this option,
1 'tar' will print a usage message listing all available options on
1 standard output, then exit successfully, without doing anything else and
1 ignoring all other options.  Even if this is only a brief summary, it
1 may be several screens long.  So, if you are not using some kind of
1 scrollable window, you might prefer to use something like:
1 
1      $ tar --help | less
1 
1 presuming, here, that you like using 'less' for a pager.  Other popular
1 pagers are 'more' and 'pg'.  If you know about some KEYWORD which
1 interests you and do not want to read all the '--help' output, another
1 common idiom is doing:
1 
1      tar --help | grep KEYWORD
1 
1 for getting only the pertinent lines.  Notice, however, that some 'tar'
1 options have long description lines and the above command will list only
1 the first of them.
1 
1    The exact look of the option summary displayed by 'tar --help' is
1 configurable.  ⇒Configuring Help Summary, for a detailed
1 description.
1 
1    If you only wish to check the spelling of an option, running 'tar
1 --usage' may be a better choice.  This will display a terse list of
1 'tar' options without accompanying explanations.
1 
1    The short help output is quite succinct, and you might have to get
1 back to the full documentation for precise points.  If you are reading
1 this paragraph, you already have the 'tar' manual in some form.  This
1 manual is available in a variety of forms from
1 <http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual>.  It may be printed out of the
1 GNU 'tar' distribution, provided you have TeX already installed
1 somewhere, and a laser printer around.  Just configure the distribution,
1 execute the command 'make dvi', then print 'doc/tar.dvi' the usual way
1 (contact your local guru to know how).  If GNU 'tar' has been
1 conveniently installed at your place, this manual is also available in
1 interactive, hypertextual form as an Info file.  Just call 'info tar'
1 or, if you do not have the 'info' program handy, use the Info reader
1 provided within GNU Emacs, calling 'tar' from the main Info menu.
1 
1    There is currently no 'man' page for GNU 'tar'.  If you observe such
1 a 'man' page on the system you are running, either it does not belong to
1 GNU 'tar', or it has not been produced by GNU.  Some package maintainers
1 convert 'tar --help' output to a man page, using 'help2man'.  In any
1 case, please bear in mind that the authoritative source of information
1 about GNU 'tar' is this Texinfo documentation.
1 
1    ---------- Footnotes ----------
1 
1    (1) There are plans to merge the 'cpio' and 'tar' packages into a
1 single one which would be called 'paxutils'.  So, who knows if, one of
1 this days, the '--version' would not output 'tar (GNU paxutils) 3.2'.
1