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.
Published under the terms of the GNU General Public License