File Operations

Archive creation, extraction, and management

# Create tar archive
tar -cvf archive.tar files/

# Create compressed tar archive
tar -czvf archive.tar.gz files/

# Extract tar archive
tar -xvf archive.tar

# Extract compressed tar archive
tar -xzvf archive.tar.gz

# List contents of archive
tar -tvf archive.tar

# Extract specific files
tar -xvf archive.tar file1.txt file2.txt

# Create archive excluding files
tar -czvf archive.tar.gz --exclude='*.tmp' files/

# Update existing archive
tar -uvf archive.tar newfile.txt

ZIP compression and extraction operations

# Create zip archive
zip archive.zip files/

# Create zip with compression level
zip -9 archive.zip files/

# Extract zip archive
unzip archive.zip

# Extract to specific directory
unzip archive.zip -d /path/to/directory/

# List contents of zip
unzip -l archive.zip

# Extract specific files
unzip archive.zip file1.txt file2.txt

# Create password-protected zip
zip -e archive.zip files/

# Extract with overwrite
unzip -o archive.zip

File comparison and patch management

# Compare two files
diff file1.txt file2.txt

# Compare files with context
diff -c file1.txt file2.txt

# Compare files with unified format
diff -u file1.txt file2.txt

# Compare directories
diff -r dir1/ dir2/

# Create patch file
diff -u original.txt modified.txt > changes.patch

# Apply patch file
patch original.txt changes.patch

# Reverse patch
patch -R original.txt changes.patch

# Show only differences
diff --brief file1.txt file2.txt

File and directory linking operations

# Create symbolic link
ln -s /path/to/target link_name

# Create hard link
ln /path/to/target link_name

# Create symbolic link to directory
ln -s /path/to/directory link_dir

# Remove symbolic link
rm link_name

# List symbolic links
ls -la | grep '^l'

# Find broken symbolic links
find /path -type l -exec test ! -e {} \;

# Create relative symbolic link
ln -s ../target link_name