How to tar multiple files

To group multiple files : tar -cvf foo.tar a.dat b.dat c.dat ( this will group files [a-c]*.dat to one file foo.tar )
c = create a tar file
v = verbose( nothing important :P )
f = create the tar file with filename provided as the argument

Thats all you need to know to tar(group) a bunch of files/directories.

* To tar files and gzip them : tar -czf foo.tar.gz *.dat ( this will create a gzip-compressed Tar file of the name foo.tar.gz of all files with a .dat suffix in that directory )

* To untar(separate) files from a tar archive : tar -xvf foo.tar ( this will produce three separate files a.dat, b.dat and c.dat )

* To untar(extract) a gzipped tar archive file : tar -xzf foo.tar.gz

* To untar a bzipped (.bz2) tar archive file : tar -xjf foo.tar.bz2