I have never needed to use any other options for tar other than -cvzpf. Is there some way to set that as the default behavior?
While I recognize that it is often impossible to say why someone wrote a program one way as opposed to another, I do not understand why tar doesn't do things like most other command line utilities, i.e.:
command -options /source/path /target/path
Why is it instead:
command -options /target/path /source/path
-cvzpf is not the default behavior for at least the following reasons.
Regarding why it is not how you suggest it should be, it is historic reasons dealing with its use with tape drives and the original authors coding.
Regarding making that the default behavior, you could create an alias however, you would need a separate one for extracting files.
A separate way to change the default options with the GNU implementation of tar is by setting the TAR_OPTIONS environment variable. Though I have found that it does not like it when you try to specify -f as one of the options.
export TAR_OPTIONS=-tvzp
Note that while you can set the options, this will cause an error if you pass tar a conflicting option. For instance, if you have TAR_OPTIONS set as above and you try to extract an archive, you will get the following error.
tar: You may not specify more than one `-Acdtrux' or `--test-label' option
Try `tar --help' or `tar --usage' for more information.
I do not know the answers to the two questions about tar, but I can tell you how to set the default behaviour of any command line tools.
Using the alias command, you can replace any word in a shell by a string. The exact use of alias depends on the shell you use. The following example works in the bash shell:
alias tar='tar -cvzpf'
This will replace the word tar with "tar -cvzpf". In order for bash to "remember" this, the alias command needs to be placed in a script that is executed at the start of the bash shell, for example .bashrc. (Some users like to collect all aliases in a seperate script, e.g. .alias, and call that script from .bashrc.)
In the csh/tcsh shell, you omit the = and use double quotes " instead of single quotes. To find out which shell you are using, type echo $SHELL.
tcsh. Actually they're fine with most shells while double quotes for instance are non-special characters in shells of the rc family (which don't have alias though).
tar -cvzp /source/path -f /target/pathif you so desire, or eventar -cvzp /source/path > /target/path. Please first investigate what the options you're typing mean before complaining about them.-foption, that is why the order is this way. A usual way to usetaris to pipe its output to whatever compression program you want to use, that's why the default is to not require a target file. Not everyone want Gzip (or one of the few provided as options).