To list the contents of a tar archive (always a good thing to
do right after creating one), use the -t option in place of
-c:
%tar -tvf nc.tar List all files in archive file nc.tar. -rw-r-r- 1047 100 3320 Dec 20 00:41:30 nc/About -rw-r-r- 1047 100 3106 Oct 27 15:35:22 nc/doc/mknewsrc.1 -rw-r-r- 1047 100 6503 Apr 28 02:58:16 nc/doc/ncc.1 -rw-r-r- 1047 100 8698 Apr 28 02:57:49 nc/doc/nclip.1 -rw-r-r- 1047 100 155636 May 16 22:41:29 nc/doc/man.mm -rw-r-r- 1047 100 91031 May 16 22:41:34 nc/doc/append.mm -rw-r-r- 1047 100 18501 Jun 02 23:55:48 nc/doc/filter.man -rw-r-r- 1047 100 1464 Dec 15 01:45:26 nc/Makefile -rw-r-r- 1047 100 2626 Dec 18 19:08:39 nc/READ.ME -rw-r-r- 1047 100 4082 Apr 19 16:34:31 nc/License
(here the -t option is concatenated with v and f). But be careful. Using the -c option accidently will wipe out your tar.