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Timeline for Why would I tar a single file?

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Mar 29 at 13:55 comment added steve Dewi: I think it's relatively obvious why one would compress a single file, but tarring a single file is less obvious. I came to this question bc I wanted to know why one would tar a single file regardless of compression, and jofel's answer is just wanted I wanted to know.
Apr 22, 2016 at 23:12 comment added Dewi Morgan This feels to me like the correct answer. I'd also add a few more reasons, which you might wanto to edit in if you agree. 1) there's no additional cost to the admin for .tgz over .tar or .gz alone: they're all just one command 2) Admins back up, copy, relocate, move a LOT of files, for a lot of different reasons; DB backups are just one of these. They can use the same workflow, tools and commands whether backing up one or multiple files; so why specialcase using the syntax of the gzip command, for the case where there is one file?
Apr 21, 2016 at 14:23 comment added gardenhead Thanks for clarifying that! When I was reading the tar wikipedia page, I misunderstood the description to mean that the checksum was for the whole file.
Apr 21, 2016 at 11:47 history edited Anthon CC BY-SA 3.0
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Apr 21, 2016 at 10:42 history edited Anthon CC BY-SA 3.0
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Apr 21, 2016 at 9:02 history answered Anthon CC BY-SA 3.0