Use tar and gz to create archive in Ubuntu Terminal

Question

I want to archive 3 folders, given their names in Ubuntu command prompt.
When I use tar -c abc tt zz -> it will do nothing.

Answer 1

You can use this command

 tar -cvzf tarname.tar.gz a b c

eg:

x@x:/tmp/aas$ touch a b c
x@x:/tmp/aas$ ls
a  b  c
x@x:/tmp/aas$ tar cvzf tarname.tar.gz a b c
a
b
c
x@x:/tmp/aas$ ls
a  b  c  tarname.tar.gz
x@x:/tmp/aas$ rm a b c
x@x:/tmp/aas$ ls
tarname.tar.gz
x@x:/tmp/aas$ gunzip -c tarname.tar.gz | tar xvf -
a
b
c
x@x:/tmp/aas$ ls
a  b  c  tarname.tar.gz
x@x:/tmp/aas$ 

Answer 2

You either need to redirect that output to your tarball name as in:

tar -c abc tt zz > tarball.tar

(Careful, that will overwrite tarball.tar if it's already there) or you need to use the -f flag for tar and specify a filename as in:

tar -cf tarball.tar abc tt zz