Using tar+gzip 1

[omegabetax]

Can tell me someone why it's necessary to use tar command then gzip to compress a file.
Why not only gzip then simply gunzip ?

Thanks

 

[TonyGroves]

You don't need to use tar if you're only compressing one file. But if you want to compress several files into one, you have to first use tar to create an archive of the files, then compress the archive.

 

[omegabetax]

gzip cannot compress multiple files at once ?

 

[TonyGroves]

Bingo!

 

[lgarner]

It can can compress many files at once, but they'll be individual zipped files in the end.

If you have file1,file2 and file3, then "gzip file?" would yield file1.gz, file2.gz and file3.gz.