Tar (computing)

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tar

Original author(s)	Bell Laboratories
Developer(s)	Various open-source and commercial developers
Initial release	January 1979; 46 years ago (1979-01)
Stable release(s)
BSD tar 3.7.2[1] / 2023-09-12 GNU tar 1.35[2]  / 2023-07-18 pdtar 1986-10-29[3][4] / 1986-10-29 Plan 9 tar ? / ? star 2023-09-28[5] / 2023-09-28
Written in	pdtar, star, Plan 9, GNU: C
Operating system	Unix, Unix-like, Plan 9, Microsoft Windows, IBM i
Platform	Cross-platform
Type	Command
License	BSD tar: BSD-2-Clause GNU tar: GPL-3.0-or-later pdtar: Public domain Plan 9: MIT star: CDDL-1.0

In computing, tar is a shell command for combining multiple computer files into a single archive file. It was originally developed for magnetic tape storage – reading and writing data for a sequential I/O device with no file system, and the name is short for the format description "tape archive". When stored in a file system, a file that tar reads and writes is often called a tarball.

A tarball contains metadata for the contained files including the name, ownership, timestamps, permissions and directory organization. As a file containing other files with associated metadata, a tarball is useful for software distribution and backup.

POSIX abandoned tar in favor of pax, yet tar continues to have widespread use.