Recursive tar compression?

Question

I'd like to create a tar file to compress a folder that contains sub folders. I'm trying with the following command int in the terminal:

tar -czf folder directorios.tar.gz

directorios.tar.gz would be the result

Answer 1

Try:

tar -czvf directorios.tar.gz folder

A few notes:

1. Recursion is the default, from the tar man pages:

   -c, --create
       Create a new archive.  Arguments supply the names of the files to be archived.
       Directories  are  archived  recursively,  unless  the --no-recursion option is
       given.
   

   Although this can be turned off by using the --no-recursion option...

2. You need the archive name immediately after the -f option, the correct sequence being:

   tar -c [-f ARCHIVE] [OPTIONS] [FILE...]
            ^^^^^^^^^^
   

3. For a more flexible command line (particularly if you wanted to use other compression utilities apart from gzip with tar) you could omit the -z option and use -a or --auto-compress option to allow tar to automatically decide which compressor to use based on the archive suffix:

   -a, --auto-compress
       Use archive suffix to determine the compression program.
   

   Recognised suffixes (and their attendant compressing applications) are:

   • .gz : gzip
   • .tgz : gzip
   • .taz : gzip
   • .z : compress
   • .taZ : compress
   • .bz2 : bzip2
   • .tz2 : bzip2
   • .tbz2 : bzip2
   • .tbz : bzip2
   • .lz : lzip
   • .lzma : lzma
   • .tlz : lzma
   • .lzo : lzop
   • .xz : xz
   • .zst : zstd
   • .tzst : zstd

tar is pretty cool :)

References:

• 8.1.1 Creating and Reading Compressed Archives Sound information on using the auto-compress options with tar as well as the possibilities for accomplishing the same goal with a more manual and flexible option...