3 ms·

I tried tar xvzf 1.zip and got xvzf: is neither a valid subcommand, option, or argument.

ziofill 2y ago
https://xkcd.com/1168/ https://xkcd.com/1168/
SomewhatLikely 2y ago
I've switched to LLM's for explaining commands. Here's ChatGPT4o: The command tar xvzf 1.zip appears to be trying to extract a compressed archive file, but there's a mismatch between the file extension (1.zip) and the command options used for tar. Let me break it down: tar: This is the command-line utility for working with tar archives (tape archives). It can be used to create, extract, and manipulate tar files. x: This option tells tar to extract files from an archive. v: This stands for "verbose", which means that tar will list the files being extracted to the terminal. z: This option tells tar to handle a compressed archive using gzip. It is typically used with .tar.gz or .tgz files. f: This tells tar that the next argument is the name of the archive file. However, the file 1.zip is a ZIP file, not a tar.gz file. ZIP files are handled by the unzip command, not tar. Using tar xvzf on a .zip file would result in an error, as tar expects a .tar.gz file when using the z option. To properly extract a .zip file, you should use: unzip 1.zip This command will extract the contents of the ZIP file.
- compootr 2y ago
  bruh. why did we need to involve llms? you could do a man pages on steroids — i.e explains what the args do a tiny asterisk is that llms will hallucinate and spit out bs
- jchw 2y ago
  Well it got the flags right, but it's kind of wrong too. I mean it's true that GNU tar will not handle a Zip archive, but libarchive BSD tar is more than happy to handle most common archive formats, including Zip archives. $ tar -a -cvf file.zip a.exe a a.exe $ file file.zip file.zip: Zip archive data, at least v2.0 to extract, compression method=deflate $ tar xvf file.zip x a.exe This may seem like a silly catch-22, but the truth is a lot of people who will need to ask questions like this are in fact likely to encounter BSD tar. macOS ships with BSD tar with Zip support, and I believe even Windows does nowadays. I don't think you'll have an unzip command in vanilla Windows so that could easily waste someone's time if they didn't realize it.
jmercouris 2y ago
Isn't it true that you must provide the hyphen before `xvzf`?
- jchw 2y ago
  Actually no. All tar implementations I know of support "old" style options. https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_section/Styles.html#Old-Options https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_section/Styles.... I don't know the exact history of how this options style came to be, but I assume it's probably some really ancient UNIX thing.
begueradj 2y ago
You are right. And it seems that's the case with several other arguments that follows `tar`such as `cvf`, `xvf`, `czvf`...etc

https://xkcd.com/1168/ https://xkcd.com/1168/

I've switched to LLM's for explaining commands. Here's ChatGPT4o: The command tar xvzf 1.zip appears to be trying to extract a compressed archive file, but there's a mismatch between the file extension (1.zip) and the command options used for tar. Let me break it down: tar: This is the command-line utility for working with tar archives (tape archives). It can be used to create, extract, and manipulate tar files. x: This option tells tar to extract files from an archive. v: This stands for "verbose", which means that tar will list the files being extracted to the terminal. z: This option tells tar to handle a compressed archive using gzip. It is typically used with .tar.gz or .tgz files. f: This tells tar that the next argument is the name of the archive file. However, the file 1.zip is a ZIP file, not a tar.gz file. ZIP files are handled by the unzip command, not tar. Using tar xvzf on a .zip file would result in an error, as tar expects a .tar.gz file when using the z option. To properly extract a .zip file, you should use: unzip 1.zip This command will extract the contents of the ZIP file.

compootr 2y ago
bruh. why did we need to involve llms? you could do a man pages on steroids — i.e explains what the args do a tiny asterisk is that llms will hallucinate and spit out bs
jchw 2y ago
Well it got the flags right, but it's kind of wrong too. I mean it's true that GNU tar will not handle a Zip archive, but libarchive BSD tar is more than happy to handle most common archive formats, including Zip archives. $ tar -a -cvf file.zip a.exe a a.exe $ file file.zip file.zip: Zip archive data, at least v2.0 to extract, compression method=deflate $ tar xvf file.zip x a.exe This may seem like a silly catch-22, but the truth is a lot of people who will need to ask questions like this are in fact likely to encounter BSD tar. macOS ships with BSD tar with Zip support, and I believe even Windows does nowadays. I don't think you'll have an unzip command in vanilla Windows so that could easily waste someone's time if they didn't realize it.

jmercouris 2y ago

Isn't it true that you must provide the hyphen before `xvzf`?

jchw 2y ago
Actually no. All tar implementations I know of support "old" style options. https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_section/Styles.html#Old-Options https://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_section/Styles.... I don't know the exact history of how this options style came to be, but I assume it's probably some really ancient UNIX thing.

begueradj 2y ago

You are right. And it seems that's the case with several other arguments that follows `tar`such as `cvf`, `xvf`, `czvf`...etc