Final answer:
To view the contents of a tar file without extracting it, use the command 'tar -tvf file.tar' for regular tar files or 'tar -ztvf file.tar.gz' for gzipped tar files.
Step-by-step explanation:
To view the contents of a tar file without extracting it, you can use the tar command with certain options depending on your operating system and shell environment.
For most Unix-like systems, such as Linux and macOS, you can use the following command:
tar -tvf file.tar
Here, the 't' option tells tar to list the contents, the 'v' option enables verbose mode to show additional details, and the 'f' option specifies the tar file you want to view.
You should replace 'file.tar' with the actual file name of your tar archive.
If the tar file is also compressed with gzip (file extension '.tar.gz' or '.tgz'), you can use the following command:
tar -ztvf file.tar.gz
Here, the 'z' option is used to tell tar to decompress the archive using gzip before listing the contents.
This allows you to see the files packed inside the tar archive without fully extracting them to your filesystem.