I always use tldr for these things, super handy to have.

I just use atool (archive tool) instead. It works the same for any common compression format (tar, gzip, zip, 7zip, rar, etc) and comes with handy aliases like apack and aunpack obsoleting the need to memorize options.

Or -I 'compress-command' -cf ... if not supported.

Nowaday I have ChatGPT spew me command. I usually do a quick validation before running. Nevertheless, most of simple operations are correct so I don't need to.

I then note the command to my persional gist cheatsheet. Next time, since the command is "cached", I'll be able to be productive quicker.

So much better than googling.

That looks really cool. And finally a guide that knows -z is not necessary all the time.

great, now how do I use it together with the 'feather' command?

Do more like this (・へ・)

Damn, I'm using the "tape archiver" (this is what tar means) since I installed HPUX8 in the 90s, from tape, yes...

So a serious question from someone who can't remember console commands ever despite using them constantly.

Why are so many linux CLI commands set up with defaults that no one ever uses? Like if you pretty much always need -f, -v is often used, and --auto-compress is needed to recognize type by extension. Why aren't those the defaults to just using tar?

A lot of applications I find are like this too, they don't come with defaults that work or that anyone would ever use.

No no it's this:

1. Decide you've gotta use tar.

2. man tar

3. Guess-and-check the flags until it seems to work.

4. Immediately forget the flags.

Don't you have to specify the compression algorithm when extracting? I always use tar -xzf for gzip files and if I remove -z it just fails.

Check out atool