Listing the Contents of a Stored Directory

To get information about the contents of an archived directory, use the directory name as a file name argument in conjunction with --list (-t). To find out file attributes, include the --verbose (-v) option.

For example, to find out about files in the directory practice, in the archive file music.tar, type:

     $ tar --list --verbose --file=music.tar practice

tar responds:

     drwxrwxrwx myself user 0 1990-05-31 21:49 practice/
     -rw-r--r-- myself user 42 1990-05-21 13:29 practice/blues
     -rw-r--r-- myself user 62 1990-05-23 10:55 practice/folk
     -rw-r--r-- myself user 40 1990-05-21 13:30 practice/jazz
     -rw-r--r-- myself user 10240 1990-05-31 21:49 practice/collection.tar

When you use a directory name as a file name argument, tar acts on all the files (including sub-directories) in that directory.