Working with archive files (.tar, .tgz, .tar.gz, .tar.bz2)

tar zxvf file.tar.gz
Uncompress and extract the gzipped tar file file.tar.gz

tar jxvf file.tar.gz
Uncompress and extract the bzipped tar file file.tar.gz

tar zcvf file.tar.gz dirname
Archive and gzip compress the directory dirname into the file file.tar.gz

tar jcvf file.tar.gz dirname
Archive and bzip2 compress the directory dirname into the file file.tar.gz