tar

tar: see tar and pitch.

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tar

(Tape ARchive) A Unix utility that is used to archive files by combining several files into one. It is often used in conjunction with the "compress" or "gzip" commands to compress the data. The name came from the days when magnetic tape was the predominant storage medium rather than disk. Tar archives are often called "tarballs." See archive formats.

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tar

1. any of various dark viscid substances obtained by the destructive distillation of organic matter such as coal, wood, or peat

2. another name for coal tar

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tar [tär]

(materials)

A viscous material composed of complex, high-molecular-weight compounds derived from the distillation of petroleum or the destructive distillation of wood or coal.

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(file format)

tar - ("Tape ARchive", following ar) Unix's general purpose archive utility and the file format it uses. Tar was originally intended for use with magnetic tape but, though it has several command line options related to tape, it is now used more often for packaging files together on other media, e.g. for distribution via the Internet. The resulting archive, a "tar file" (humourously, "tarball") is often compressed, using gzip or some other form of compression (see tar and feather). There is a GNU version of tar called gnutar with several improvements over the standard versions. Filename extension: .tar MIME type: unregistered, but commonly application/x-tar Unix manual page: tar(1). Compare shar, zip.