c
Tells tar to create a new archive.
v
This says to be verbose; that is, it tells tar to let you know what it’s doing while it creates the archive.
f
This indicates that the next thing on the command line is the name of the file to be created or the device to be used. If I used /dev/st0 here, for instance, it would write the backup to the tape drive.
myfiles.tar.gz This is the name of the file to be created.
/usr/local/bi
This is the name of the file or directory to store in the archive. It’s also possible to specify several items here.
You may often find tar.gz files (or simply tgz files) on the Internet. You can unpack these with a command like: