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(tar.info)Selecting Archive Members

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Selecting Archive Members
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   "File Name arguments" specify which files in the file system `tar'
operates on, when creating or adding to an archive, or which archive
members `tar' operates on, when reading or deleting from an archive.
Note: Operations.

   To specify file names, you can include them as the last arguments on
the command line, as follows:
     tar OPERATION [OPTION1 OPTION2 ...] [FILE NAME-1 FILE NAME-2 ...]

   If you specify a directory name as a file name argument, all the
files in that directory are operated on by `tar'.

   If you do not specify files when `tar' is invoked with `--create'
(`-c'), `tar' operates on all the non-directory files in the working
directory.  If you specify either `--list' (`-t') or `--extract'
(`--get', `-x'), `tar' operates on all the archive members in the
archive.  If you specify any operation other than one of these three,
`tar' does nothing.

   By default, `tar' takes file names from the command line.  However,
there are other ways to specify file or member names, or to modify the
manner in which `tar' selects the files or members upon which to
operate.  In general, these methods work both for specifying the names
of files and archive members.