bash: /bin/tar: Argument list too long when compressing many files with tar

Issue

I am trying compress files from an archive with the command

tar -czvf compress_file.tar.gz $(cat file_list.txt)

And I have an error

-bash: /bin/tar: Argument list too long

The files numbers is too long, how can I resolve this?

Solution

Use the "-T" option to pass a file to tar that contains the filenames to tar up.

tar -czv -T file_list.txt -f tarball.tar.gz

Answered By – Mark Setchell

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