how to prevent overwrite existing files when using tar command

Question

I made a mistake that forgot to assign argument of the file name when using tar command like below:

[john@foobar foo]$ ll
total 0
-rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 0  7月  4 19:20 2018 file1
-rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 0  7月  4 19:20 2018 file2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 0  7月  4 19:20 2018 file3
[john@foobar foo]$ tar -cvzf file1 file2 file3
file2
file3
[john@foobar foo]$ ll
total 4
-rw-rw-r-- 1 john john 130  7月  4 19:21 2018 file1
-rw-rw-r-- 1 john john   0  7月  4 19:20 2018 file2
-rw-rw-r-- 1 john john   0  7月  4 19:20 2018 file3

When forget to assign archive file name, tar overwrites and creates the archive file1.

I checked man tar, but it seems there is no option such as cp shows a prompt when same name file already exists.

To create a foolproof script is a possible way?

Solution

From man tar:

-k, --keep-old-files
       don’t replace existing files when extracting, treat them as errors

--skip-old-files
       don’t replace existing files when extracting, silently skip over them

Comments

[Rohan Kishibe]

This option is for extracting. when creating an archive, this option doesn't work.

[Poshi]

Ouch! Sorry, I understood you were talking about extracting files. In that case, you should check beforehand: stackoverflow.com/questions/21680601/…