pax

Archiving and copying utility. More information: https://manned.org/pax.1p.

• List the contents of an archive:

pax -f archive.tar

• List the contents of a gzip archive:

pax -zf archive.tar.gz

• Create an archive from files:

pax -wf target.tar path/to/file1 path/to/file2 …

• Create an archive from files, using output redirection:

pax -w path/to/file1 path/to/file2 … > target.tar

• Extract an archive into the current directory:

pax -rf source.tar

• Copy to a directory, while keeping the original metadata; target/ must exist:

pax -rw path/to/file1 path/to/directory1 path/to/directory2 … target/