That second one will create a tarbomb[1], which isn't necessarily wrong and maybe it's what's right for your application, but for more general usage this is fri

That second one will create a tarbomb[1], which isn't necessarily wrong and maybe it's what's right for your application, but for more general usage this is friendlier: tar cf <mydir.tar> <mydir> [1] http://www.linfo.org/tarbomb.html http://www.linfo.org/tarbomb.html