un-tarring a disk file

[Doug Gwyn]

In article <8832 at hydra.gatech.EDU> ae219dp at prism.gatech.EDU (Devon Prichard) writes:
>summary says it all; I have a file (gnuplot.tar.Z from Duke Univ.)
>which I want to bust out on a unix system.  I looked at the man
>pages for tar, but it sort of implied it wanted a disk-to-tape
>or tape-to-disk operation.  how do I untar a disk file and write
>disk files??

The "f" option to "tar" allows you to specify an archive file name
in place of the default (that is normally a magtape device file name).
However, for a .Z file you should first "uncompress" it.