GNU tar seems to have gained the a switch which will detect the right decompress... | Hacker News

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		voltagex_ on Nov 25, 2013 \| parent \| context \| favorite \| on: Linux shell tips and tricks GNU tar seems to have gained the a switch which will detect the right decompressor. e.g. tar axf linux.tar.gz tar axf linux.tar.bz2 tar axf linux.tar.xz will all work, assuming you have gzip, bzip2 and xz installed.

deathanatos on Nov 25, 2013 [–]

Nowadays, `tar -xf foo.tar.gz` (at least in Linux) will auto-detect the gzipping and just do the right thing. I think it uses file extension, so I'd suspect it works for .bz2 and .xz too. (Not sure I'd use this for shell scripts, but for everyday command line it should work.)

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