Tar Archive Lister
See everything inside a .tar or .tar.gz tarball — paths, byte sizes, permission modes, owners, groups, entry types, symlink targets and timestamps — read straight from the archive headers. Nothing is unpacked, nothing is uploaded, and it all runs in your browser.
About this tool
A tarball is just a sequence of 512-byte headers plus file payload blocks. This tool walks those headers and prints the archive table of contents — paths, byte sizes, permission bits, owners, groups, entry types, modification times and link targets — without extracting any member data to disk.
Paste a base64 or hex encoded .tar, .tar.gz or .tgz archive, then choose whether you
want a human tar -tvf style table, one path per line, CSV, or structured JSON. Everything
runs locally in your browser; the archive bytes are not uploaded.
Worked example
The built-in sample is a small gzip-compressed tar with directories, text files and a symlink. With the default table output, the result looks like a traditional long listing:
drwxr-xr-x alice/staff 0 2024-05-01 10:00:00 demo/
-rw-r--r-- alice/staff 7 2024-05-01 10:00:00 demo/README.md
drwxr-xr-x alice/staff 0 2024-05-01 10:00:00 demo/docs/
-rw-r--r-- alice/staff 12 2024-05-01 10:00:00 demo/docs/hello.txt
lrwxrwxrwx alice/staff 0 2024-05-01 10:00:00 demo/link.txt -> docs/hello.txt
5 of 5 member(s) listed (2 file(s), 2 director(y/ies), 1 other) — 19 byte(s) of content in a 4608 tar.gz stream
Switch Output format to paths when you only need names, csv for a spreadsheet, or
json for automation that needs offsets, numeric mode fields and archive totals.
What it understands
- Plain
.tarplus gzip-wrapped.tar.gz/.tgzstreams. - v7, ustar, GNU long-name / long-link headers and PAX extended headers.
- Regular files, directories, symlinks, hardlinks, device nodes, FIFOs and unknown types.
- Base64 (standard or URL-safe, with optional padding) and hex input.
- Path filters:
*.txtandsrc/*are glob patterns;READMEis a substring match.
Limits
Decoded and decompressed input is capped at 64 MiB, with at most 200,000 members
parsed. The page default lists the first 500 matches; raise limit when you intentionally
want a longer listing. bzip2, xz and zstd tarballs are detected and rejected with a clear
message — decompress those first, then list the plain tar.
FAQ
Does this unpack files from the archive?
No. The parser reads tar headers and skips over each payload block. It reports metadata such as path, type, size and mode, but it never writes archive members to the browser filesystem or to your disk.
Can it list `.tar.gz` and `.tgz` files?
Yes. gzip is detected from the magic bytes, so the same input_format = base64 works for
plain .tar and gzip-wrapped .tar.gz / .tgz data. Other compressors such as bzip2, xz
and zstd are not decompressed here; decompress them first and paste the resulting tar.
What is the difference between `output = table`, `paths`, `csv` and `json`?
table is a human long listing similar to tar -tvf. paths emits only member names, one
per line. csv includes one row per member with fields such as mode, owner, mtime and offset.
json adds archive-level totals plus a structured object for every listed entry.
How do filters work?
A filter containing * or ? is matched as a glob against the whole member path. For
example, *.txt matches text files anywhere in the archive and src/* matches members under
src/. A filter without wildcards is a plain substring search.
Why does the tool ask for base64 or hex instead of a file upload?
This repository's pure-WASM page surface uses text parameters shared with the CLI and chat
schema. Base64 and hex make the same deterministic engine work on the web page, in gizza tool, and inside the block runtime without adding a separate file-upload API.
Developer & Automation Access
Run it from the terminal
Same engine as this page, headless — via the gizza CLI:
gizza tool tar-archive-lister "H4sIAAAAAAAAA+2VsQrCMBRFO/sVBfealybNLLSji39QmhaLqYG2op9vEhG1Q0Ux6ZCcJRAe5MJ994bXndxEdkEKRqk+gVH0ej6IgGRACAAm6h5ATUQxtazLcB7GsldSStFW9cycGmsaF4LcwrX/+2Kb74qk43be0AZnhMz4zyb+Y6zWJUZ25Lzjuf/rOFcbsFpaRmAhTP65rAaLn8AP/c/S0P9OePp/qIWQyXgd//7Gx/4HMvE/pQyF/neBcT2+yF7w8Al4iMm/aE9HK8m/Y/qfsS/6n2Kdf2y5lwye5z8QCPjLDVPttHEAEgAA"New to the CLI? Get gizza →
Open it by URL
Pre-fill and auto-run this tool with query parameters — the names match the API/CLI:
https://gizza.ai/tools/tar-archive-lister/?input=H4sIAAAAAAAAA%2B2VsQrCMBRFO%2FsVBfealybNLLSji39QmhaLqYG2op9vEhG1Q0Ux6ZCcJRAe5MJ994bXndxEdkEKRqk%2BgVH0ej6IgGRACAAm6h5ATUQxtazLcB7GsldSStFW9cycGmsaF4LcwrX%2F%2B2Kb74qk43be0AZnhMz4zyb%2BY6zWJUZ25Lzjuf%2FrOFcbsFpaRmAhTP65rAaLn8AP%2Fc%2FS0P9OePp%2FqIWQyXgd%2F%2F7Gx%2F4HMvE%2FpQyF%2FneBcT2%2ByF7w8Al4iMm%2FaE9HK8m%2FY%2FqfsS%2F6n2Kdf2y5lwye5z8QCPjLDVPttHEAEgAA&input_format=base64&output=table&sort=archive&filter=%2A.txt&include_dirs=true&time_format=iso&limit=500Machine-readable descriptor: tool.json — title + parameters JSON Schema for agents.