Gettar reads a tar file from standard input and unpacks the contents into the current directory tree. By default, gettar converts absolute path names, including names starting with #, into names relative to the current directory; the -R option extracts such names as-is. The -k option tells gettar to keep existing files rather than overwriting them with files from the archive. The -v option causes gettar to print on standard error the names of files extracted. Finally, listing one or more names as arguments will extract only those files.

Lstar reads a tar file from standard input and lists the files contained therein, one per line, with four space-separated fields giving the file name, modification time (in seconds since the epoch), size (in bytes), and a constant 0 (the place holder for a checksum). The format is the same as that produced by du -n -t.

Puttar writes a tar file to standard output that contains each file, and its substructure if it is a directory. Given no arguments, puttar instead reads a list of file names from standard input and includes each file or directory named; it does not copy directory substructure.

$ cat tarlist
test.b
srv.b
$ puttar <tarlist >test.tar
$ lstar <test.tar
test.b 867178082 1104 0
srv.b 866042662 3865 0