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> I started a new contract a little while ago, and the software in
> question
> can be delivered by TAR (.tgz) files.
>
> Is the term "untar" acceptable the same way you can "unzip" a
> collection of
> files? A quick search in Google seems to suggest that it is acceptable,
> but
> I wanted to throw the question to a TARgeted (sorry) audience of
> techwr-lrs.
"Extract the files from the archive."
"Untar" may be understood by all the *NIX geeks, but it's slangy and presents problems for translation, ESL users, and users not steeped in that culture.
BTW, .tgz isn't strictly speaking a TAR file (.tar extension). It's a TAR file that's been compressed with GZip (GNU zip). The extension .tar.gz is sometimes used.
The Unix command for uncompressing these files is gunzip, and then the tar command is used to extract the contents. Or, if it's available, gtar can do both at once.
Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-903-6372
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