CZF

czf is a commonly used combination of options for the tar archiving utility. It does not refer to a separate command; instead, it instructs tar to create a new archive, compress it with gzip, and write the result to a specified file. The letters c, z, and f stand for create, gzip compression, and archive file, respectively.

In typical usage, the form is tar -czf archive.tar.gz [files or directories]. The -c option starts a new archive, -z pipes the archive through gzip for compression, and -f specifies the name of the output archive file. The order of the letters is flexible; tar -czf and tar -zcf behave the same. It is common to see an optional verbose flag (-v) included as tar -czvf archive.tar.gz [files] to list files being added.

Some additional options may be used with czf to control behavior, such as -p to preserve permissions or -C to change directories before archiving. The resulting file typically has a .tar.gz or .tgz extension, reflecting both the tar archive and gzip compression.

Notes and caveats: czf is a shorthand for a specific set of tar flags and relies on gzip being available on the system. While the basic concept is consistent across GNU tar and most BSD tar implementations, minor differences can exist in option handling or defaults. To extract a czf archive, the common form is tar -xzf archive.tar.gz.

In summary, czf encapsulates the creation of a gzip-compressed tar archive in a concise, widely used command pattern.