xvzf

Xvzf is a commonly used combination of tar command-line options for extracting a gzip-compressed tar archive on Unix-like systems. It is not a file format or a standalone program; rather, it represents flags passed to the tar tool, where x means extract, v enables verbose output, z applies gzip decompression, and f specifies the archive file.

Usage examples: tar -xvzf archive.tar.gz or tar xvzf archive.tar.gz. The -v flag is optional and can be omitted if a silent extraction is desired. The -f flag is required and is followed by the name of the archive. The order of the flags is flexible on most tar implementations.

Notes: -z indicates gzip compression; for other compressions, different flags are used: -j for bzip2 and -J for xz. To extract to a specific directory, use -C /path/to/dir in conjunction with the other options. You can also list contents with tar -tvzf archive.tar.gz or tar -tf archive.tar.gz.

Compatibility: The xvzf option string is standard on GNU tar and most BSD implementations, and is widely used on Linux and macOS. Some older or nonstandard tar versions may require different ordering or syntax; in practice the long form, tar -xzf file.tar.gz, is also common.