Andrejs Cainikovs blog

tar cf  archive.tar     dir/
tar czf archive.tar.gz  dir/
tar cjf archive.tar.bz2 dir/

# will work with tar, tar.gz, tar.bz2
# add -v to see extraction process
tar xf archive.tar.gz

# delete all files except *.ext:
find -not -name *.ext -type f | xargs rm -rf
#delete all directories except those that contain at least one file:
find -depth -type d -empty -exec rmdir {} \;