tar command help
 

I had a question about using the tar command. Ive been working on trying to compress some files.
So lets say I have 4 files
backup1.txt
backup2.txt
backup3.txt
backup4.txt
And these are the only files in the directory I can run
tar cvf * to combine the files and create a single compressed file However since im not specifying a file name how would the tar command name the compressed file. Would it just be backup.txt.tar or just backup.tar? Im just not sure how the naming would work.

it would create an archive called backup1.txt which would contain 3 files (backup2.txt, backup3.txt and backup4.txt)

Yes, but this is a mistake -- the archive is given the name of the first file in the list (and that file's contents are lost). You don't want to do this.

Also, use the standard syntax -- prefix a "-" to the option list:

So you aren't giving TAR a filename and you wonder what TAR will do without any guidance? Have you considered solving the problem by giving TAR a filename? Have you considered performing an experiment to test your assumptions?

You must give TAR either a filename or "-" as a signal to dump the archive onto the output stream:

A warning. If you don't do either of these things, TAR will erase the first file in the list and replace its contents with its archive of the remaining listed files. Please read:

You Have to give the name explicitly i guess

tar -cvf backup *

Here backup will become the compressed file
Also I recommend using cpio rather than tar you can also use

find . | cpio -ocv > backup

you can extract backup using

cpio -i < backup

Hope this will be helpfull

Yes, except that it isn't compressed. For compression, you need to:

The second compresses more, but takes longer to run.

Thanks everyone for your help hopefully once I have a few months getting used to this system Ill be able to help other people out as well.