When comparing .tar vs .zip, the Slant community recommends .tar for most people. In the question“What are the best archive file formats?” .tar is ranked 2nd while .zip is ranked 3rd. The most important reason people chose .tar is:
Known everywhere and allows options to compress. Unix/Linux tools peer inside without unwrapping the file, example is 'less'. Lack of knowledge on tar shows level of newbieness and computing competence.
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Pros
Pro The defacto file packager compression built in
Known everywhere and allows options to compress. Unix/Linux tools peer inside without unwrapping the file, example is 'less'.
Lack of knowledge on tar shows level of newbieness and computing competence.
Pro Wraps files up without any compression so you can choose your own tool to compress a "solid" file
The alternative is to compress each file individually and shove it in the archive. This prevents your compression engine from taking advantage of similarities between files, but allows you to extract undamaged files from a damaged archive.