TAR

TAR — Tape Archive

document

TAR (Tape ARchive) is a Unix/Linux file bundling format that combines multiple files and directories into a single file without compression. Originally designed for tape backup storage, it remains the foundation of Linux software distribution and is almost always used with an additional compression layer such as gzip (.tar.gz) or bz2 (.tar.bz2).

6 conversions available

✓Common use cases

›Linux and Unix software source distribution
›Creating uncompressed file bundles as a pipeline step
›Preserving file permissions, ownership, and symlinks
›Base for TGZ/TBZ2/TXZ compressed archives
›Container image layers (Docker uses tar internally)

★Advantages

›Preserves full UNIX file metadata (permissions, ownership, symlinks)
›Lossless bundling with no compression overhead
›Streamable — can pipe directly to compression tools
›Native on all UNIX/Linux/macOS systems
›Foundation for Docker, dpkg, rpm packaging

⚙Technical details

POSIX.1-2001 (pax) format; stores UNIX metadata (permissions, uid/gid, symlinks, hardlinks); sequential access; no built-in compression; common extensions: .tar, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2, .tar.xz.

Source format(.tar)

Target format(.zip)

Accepted files :.tar

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Max 25 MB · TAR only

All TAR conversions

From	To	Action
TAR	7Z	Convert
TAR	JAR	Convert
TAR	TBZ2	Convert
TAR	TGZ	Convert
TAR	TXZ	Convert
TAR	ZIP	Convert