LFCS Question #801: Real Exam Question with Answer & Explanation

Question

Which of the following commands displays the contents of a gzip compressed tar archive?

Options

• Agzip archive.tgz | tar xvf -
• Btar ztf archive.tgz
• Cgzip -d archive.tgz | tar tvf -
• Dtar cf archive.tgz

Explanation

To display the contents of a gzip compressed tar archive, use the tar command with the z (gzip), t (list), and f (file) options.

Common mistakes.

• A. gzip archive.tgz would attempt to re-compress an already compressed file or incorrectly handle the pipe, and xvf - would extract, not just list, if it even received input.
• C. gzip -d archive.tgz without -c decompresses to a file named archive.tar (or similar) in the current directory and does not send output to stdout for piping; therefore, this command sequence is functionally incorrect for piping.
• D. tar cf archive.tgz is used to create (c) a tar archive (f) from files, not to display the contents of an existing one.

Concept tested. tar command (gzip, list contents)

Reference. https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/tar.html

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