CTar

CTar is a simple tar-like program written in C. It supports the following features:

• Listing files in a tar archive
• Extracting files from a tar archive
• Creating a tar archive
• Compressing a tar archive using gzip
• Decompressing a tar archive using gzip

gzip compression and decompression are implemented using the zlib library.

Table of Contents

• CTar
  • Table of Contents
  • Documentation
  • Prerequisites
  • Getting Started
  • Usage
    • Syntax
    • Arguments
      • Required arguments:
      • Optional arguments:
    • Examples
      • List Files in Archive:
      • Extract Files from Archive:
      • Create Archive:
      • Compress and Decompress:
      • Change Directory Before Operation:
      • Verbose Mode:
      • Help:
  • Make Targets
  • Authors

Documentation

The full doxygen generated documentation can be found at https://samymsa.github.io/ctar/

It is deployed automatically using the Doxygen GitHub Pages Deploy Action and uses the Doxygen Awesome theme.

Prerequisites

• Build Essential (for compiling) : sudo apt install build-essential
• Doxygen (optional, for generating documentation) : sudo apt install doxygen
• Graphviz (optional, for generating documentation graphs) : sudo apt install graphviz
• Lcov (optional, for generating coverage reports) : sudo apt install lcov

Getting Started

1. Compile the program using make
2. Run the program using ./bin/ctar
3. Enjoy!

Usage

Syntax

Note: From now on, the program will be referred to as ctar instead of ./bin/ctar for simplicity.

The syntax of ctar is the following:

ctar {-l|-e|-c} ARCHIVE [-d DIR] [-zvh] [FILES...]

Arguments

Required arguments:

• One of the following operations (mutually exclusive)
  • -l, --list ARCHIVE: List files in archive
  • -e, --extract ARCHIVE: Extract files from archive
  • -c, --create ARCHIVE: Create archive

Optional arguments:

• -d, --directory DIR: Change to DIR before performing any operations. Useful for creating or extracting files from/to a different directory than the current one
• -z, --compress: Compress or decompress the archive using gzip
• -v, --verbose: enable verbose mode
• -h, --help: display help
• FILES...: The files to add to the archive

Examples

List Files in Archive:

• ctar -l archive.tar: List files in the archive.tar.

Extract Files from Archive:

• ctar -e archive.tar: Extract files from archive.tar into the current directory.
• ctar -e archive.tar -d /tmp: Extract files from archive.tar into the /tmp directory.

Create Archive:

• ctar -c archive.tar file1 file2 file3: Create archive.tar from file1, file2, and file3.
• ctar -c archive.tar -d /tmp file1 file2 file3: Create archive.tar from /tmp/file1, /tmp/file2, and /tmp/file3.

Compress and Decompress:

• ctar -z -c archive.tar.gz file1 file2 file3: Create compressed archive.tar.gz from file1, file2, and file3.
• ctar -z -e archive.tar.gz -d /tmp: Extract and decompress archive.tar.gz into the /tmp directory.

Change Directory Before Operation:

• ctar -c archive.tar -d /tmp file1 file2 file3: Create archive.tar from /tmp/file1, /tmp/file2, and /tmp/file3, changing to /tmp before the operation. This will result in the archive containing the files file1, file2, and file3, instead of /tmp/file1, /tmp/file2, and /tmp/file3.

Verbose Mode:

• ctar -l archive.tar -v: List files in archive.tar in verbose mode. This will print detailed information about the files in the archive.
• ctar -e archive.tar -v -d /tmp: Extract files from archive.tar into the /tmp directory in verbose mode. This will print the names of the files as they are extracted.
• ctar -c archive.tar -v -d /tmp file1 file2 file3: Create archive.tar from /tmp/file1, /tmp/file2, and /tmp/file3, changing to /tmp before the operation, in verbose mode. This will print the names of the files as they are added to the archive.

Help:

• ctar -h: Display help.

Make Targets

Here is non-exhaustive list of the available make targets:

• make or make all: Compile the program
• make docs: Generate documentation
• make gcov: Generate coverage reports
• make package: Generate a tarball of the project
• make clean: Remove object files
• make mrproper: Remove object files, binaries, documentation, tests generated files, and coverage reports

Authors

• @samymsa
• @ybokhari