The --verbose Option

--verbose

-v

Show the files being worked on as tar is running.

--verbose (-v) shows details about the results of running tar. This can be especially useful when the results might not be obvious. For example, if you want to see the progress of tar as it writes files into the archive, you can use the --verbose option. In the beginning, you may find it useful to use --verbose at all times; when you are more accustomed to tar, you will likely want to use it at certain times but not at others. We will use --verbose at times to help make something clear, and we will give many examples both using and not using --verbose to show the differences.

Sometimes, a single instance of --verbose on the command line will show a full, ‘ls’ style listing of an archive or files, giving sizes, owners, and similar information. Other times, --verbose will only show files or members that the particular operation is operating on at the time. In the latter case, you can use --verbose twice in a command to get a listing such as that in the former case. For example, instead of saying

     tar -cvf afiles.tar apple angst aspic

above, you might say

     tar -cvvf afiles.tar apple angst aspic

This works equally well using short or long forms of options. Using long forms, you would simply write out the mnemonic form of the option twice, like this:

     $ tar --create --verbose --verbose ...

Note that you must double the hyphens properly each time.

Later in the tutorial, we will give examples using --verbose --verbose.