What's the difference between tar.gz and tar.Z?

tar compression

11,074

Solution 1

.Z files are compressed with the older compress utility while .gz are compressed with gzip.

Some ancient systems might be missing gzip/gunzip so will use uncompress and .Z files.

Solution 2

This is the right answer. I'l just add that although they are compressed using a different program, gzip/gunzip can decompress .Z archives without any problems.

11,074

InquilineKea

Quora page: http://www.quora.com/Alex-K-Chen Google+: http://profiles.google.com/simfish Email: simfish+s[at]gmail.com Feel free to stalk my Internet name(s) if you wish - it's how I make most of my closest contacts these days. Just note that I don't really believe in social constructs when they get in the way of satisficing (or in the way of my goal of learning as much as possible). Don't take anything I say/do too seriously. A lot of the things I do (that may look weird/stupid on the outside) are the types of things that help me adjust my posterior probability of various things - especially low probability events.Sometimes I hit on a jackpot/very interesting idea. I'm kind of messy since it helps facilitate creative destruction. I have a lot of respect for all of the sciences. Tactically, I'm developing heuristics for rationality, impartiality, anti-laziness, and creation+identification+searching for what's relevant+reliable. Strategically, I just want to learn everything. A lot of my thought processes involve my creating new hypotheses and refuting them on my own. I still document the thought process since it's important and may be important for future "true" hypotheses.

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

InquilineKea over 1 year

The downloads on this page, e.g. of NetCDF C/C++/Fortran 4.1.3, show tar.Z and tar.gz formats. The tar.Z doesn't even have a configure file in it. What is it used for?
rozcietrzewiacz over 12 years

However, one should not just rely on the name! Use the file program to determine the real type of the file.
Shadur over 12 years

Some very, very, VERY ancient systems that haven't seen an update in two decades...
jlliagre over 12 years

That's what I meant with ancient. For example Solaris 7 11/99 was the last Solaris release not bundling gzip.