An archive member in normally extracted into a file with the same name as the archive member. If you extract multiple members, they appear on standard output concatenated, in the order they are found in the archive. The primary argument to tar is the operation , which specifies what tar does. Option arguments to tar change details of the operation, such as archive format, archive name, or level of user interaction. You can specify more than one option.
All options are optional.
The other operations of tar will act on defaults. When you use a file name argument to specify a directory file, tar acts on all the files in that directory, including sub-directories. You must give exactly one option from the following list to tar . This option specifies the basic operation for tar to perform. The remaining options to tar change details of the operation, such as archive format, archive name, or level of user interaction.