How to decompress .tar.bz2 file

Normally, I would bunzip the file first, then untar it next. But I found something after googling for a shortcut: it can all be done with just one tar command.
$tar -xjvf example.tar.bz2

Notice that, we use j flag to decompress bzip2 file and z flag for gzip file. 🙂

8 thoughts on “How to decompress .tar.bz2 file”

Scott says:

thanks Kenno – helped me out of a jam

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February 14, 2009 at 1:05 am
Alp says:

Thanks Kenno. I used your help to decompress the RTL drivers for the 945GCLF mobo.

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March 30, 2009 at 3:03 pm
Ragavendra says:

Thanks Kenno…………….:)

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May 2, 2009 at 5:24 am
Kenno says:

You’re all welcome. Keep practicing and you’ll get used to these awesome command lines in no time.

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May 7, 2009 at 6:41 am
Nathan says:

Thanks for the line! You’ve saved me alot of time.

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May 18, 2010 at 8:47 am
podajalniki says:

Thanks for this one, i didnt have a clue! 🙂

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October 27, 2010 at 5:48 pm
nicholas ren says:

Thanks Kenno

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February 26, 2012 at 10:47 am
clearence says:

It’s only worked on gnu tars. Here are a lot of tars in tars family. I think you should aware of it.

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November 26, 2012 at 2:09 am