Sobre os arquivos TAR

Arquivo TAR

Lançado em 1979 Por Unix (AT&T Bell Labs)

TAR (Tape ARchive) é um formato de arquivamento Unix dos anos 70, criado originalmente para backup em fita magnética. Não comprime — apenas concatena múltiplos arquivos em um. Tipicamente é combinado com gzip (.tar.gz) ou xz (.tar.xz) para compressão. É o formato padrão para distribuição de software no mundo Unix/Linux: pacotes fonte, backups, snapshots de sistemas.

Família

Archives & Compressed

Extensão

.tar

Tipo MIME

application/x-tar

Pode ser usado como

Entrada Saída

A história

COMO NASCEU O
FORMATO TAR.

TAR stands for "tape archive" and the name is not ironic — when the format was added to Unix Seventh Edition in January 1979, tape drives were how you actually archived files. The format is brilliantly simple: concatenate files end-to-end, each prefixed with a 512-byte header describing the filename, permissions, owner, and size. Streaming-friendly by design: you can pipe a tar through a network socket or a tape without ever seeking.

TAR is still the default archive format on every Unix-like system. It does not compress anything by itself, so in practice you almost always pair it with gzip (.tar.gz / .tgz), bzip2 (.tar.bz2), or xz (.tar.xz). Every Linux distribution release, every Docker image layer, every Rust/Go binary release from GitHub is a tarball.

CURIOSIDADES E
FATOS INTERESSANTES.

TAR is literally "tape archive" — designed in 1979 for writing files to reel-to-reel magnetic tape.

The format uses 512-byte headers, which is the traditional block size of Unix tape drives.

TAR does not compress — "tarballs" combine TAR with gzip (.tar.gz) or xz (.tar.xz) for compression.

Docker container images are layers of tar archives stacked on top of each other.

A tar file can include symbolic links, device nodes, hard links, and Unix permissions — things ZIP handles poorly.

VANTAGENS E
LIMITAÇÕES.

Vantagens

Streamable — you can tar files straight to a network pipe, no seek needed.
Preserves Unix permissions, ownership, symbolic links, and timestamps.
Universally supported on Unix-like systems.
Simple format — the GNU tar source has been stable for decades.
No compression overhead — pair with gzip/xz/zstd as needed.

Limitações

No built-in compression — plain .tar files are the same size as their contents.
No random access — reading one file requires scanning from the start.
Windows tooling is second-class — PowerShell only added native tar in 2018.
Multiple incompatible header variants (v7, ustar, POSIX, GNU) over the years.

Tamanhos típicos de arquivo

1 MB of source files (uncompressed .tar)

~1 MB

Same files as .tar.gz

150-400 KB

Linux kernel source (.tar.xz)

~120 MB

Especificações técnicas

MIME type: application/x-tar
Extension: .tar
Block size: 512 bytes (traditional)
Header variants: v7, ustar, POSIX.1-2001 (pax), GNU
Max filename length: 100 bytes (v7); unlimited (pax extended headers)

CONVERTER A PARTIR DE
TAR

tar zip tar 7z tar gz tar bz2 tar xz tar lzma tar zst tar lz4

CONVERTER PARA
TAR

7z tar zip tar gz tar bz2 tar rar tar xz tar cab tar tgz tar jar tar war tar lzma tar zst tar lz4 tar cpio tar ar tar apk tar deb tar rpm tar lz tar iso tar dmg tar snap tar

Casos de uso comuns

Linux software packages, server backups, file bundling.